
Class T 1^^03 7 
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CQROtlGHT DEPOSIT. 



THE QUEEN OF CHINA 

AND OTHER POEMS 



NEW POETRY 

By T. S. Eliot 
POEMS 

By Osbert Sitwell 

ARGONAUT AND JUGGERNAUT 

By Majorie Allen Seiffert 
A WOMAN OF THIRTY 

By J. C. Squire 

POEMS: FIRST SERIES 

By Eunice Tietjens 

BODY AND RAIMENT 
PROFILES FROM CHINA 

By Arthur Waley 

170 CHINESE POEMS 

MORE TRANSLATIONS FROM THE CHINESE 



THE QUEEN OF CHINA 

AND OTHER POEMS 



BY 

EDWARD SHANKS 




NEW YORK 

ALFRED • A • KNOPF 

MCMXIX 



COPYRIGHT, 1.0 2 B Y 
ALFRED A. KJNOPF, Inc. 



m -9 1320 



PEJNTED IN TUP UNITKD STATES OF AMERICA 



©CI.A559a48 



TO 

NAOMI ROYDE-SMITH 

THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY 
AND GRATEFULLY DEDICATED 



I am indebted to the Editors of The 
New Statesman, To-Day and The 
Westminster Gazette, in whose pages 
many of these pieces first appeared. 

E. S. 



CONTENTS 

The Complaints 

The Complaints, i-x, 13 
Miscellaneous Poems 

The Only Begetter, 21 

Shadows, 22 

Just That Half Hour, 24 

Waste, 25 

The Return, l-iil, 26 

Song, 28 

The Debt, 29 

The fields are full, 30 

For Remembrance, 31 

Continuity, 32 

The Storm, 33 

A Night-Piece, 34 

The Flowering Trees, 36 

Clouds, 37 

Cold, 38 

On Holmbury Hill, 39 

The Wish, 40 

Mid-Winter, 42 

The Glow-worm, 43 



Contents 

The Cataclysm, 44 

In Absence, 45 

The Riddle, 46 

The Singer, 47 

Lady Godiva, 48 

Searchlights, 49 

Invitation, 50 

Ballad, 51 

The King's Dancer, 53 

Postscript to a Satire, 57 

Fete Galante; The Triumph of Love, 58 

Who knows how beauty springs, 67 

The Wild Goose Chase, 68 

Hymn to Desire, 70 

A Dialogue, 75 

Meditation in June, 1917, 78 

Elegy, 82 

The Halt, 84 
The Fireless Town, 87 
The Queen of China, 117 



THE COMPLAINTS 



THE COMPLAINTS 

To H. C. Harwood 



Well, I am tired at last! I put away 

Languor and lassitude and all regrets. 

Better, I said, the dull but solid day 

Than an endless reckoning of hopeless debts, 

Unheard complaints, unanswered prayers, unseen 

Genuflexions to an unbelieved in God. 

But I am not so dull as I have been; 

Too long this long and lightless way I have trod 

And suddenly now I see what thing I tread, 

Lit by a transient flash of the lightning brain. 

That leaps in the sky an instant and is dead 

But, having shown, needs not to come again. 

Ridiculous treadmill! that the sorry fool 

Thinks is the road to joy, his brain is so dull. 



[13] 



The Complaints 



II 
You, to whom Heaven gave all the gifts I need, 
Money and leisure, long I followed you 
And made the lightest line you wrote my creed 
And gave you the extravagant praise I thought was due. 
I'd sneer at you now, to pay my less lucky case, 
For sneering is easy from the poor to the rich. 
Throw witty songs in your cold and happy face 
And ease on your books the beggar's endless itch. 
But still from your heaven of unmoved success. 
You cast your gifts to me for my delight, 
You from your wealth to me in wretchedness, 
And every gift of yours in my eyes is bright. 
Strange power, strange happiness, strange poetry! 
That even envy cannot twist awry. 

Ill 

There are many countries that I have not seen, 
And many kinds of men I have not met, 
But all the gracious towns where I have been 
Haunt in my brain and whisper there and set 
Strange echoes going with their lovely names, 
Birdlip and Paris, Fontainebleau and Wells, 
Places that live in me like happy dreams 
And sound in the present day like distant bells. 
Here I am set and there's no end, no end; 
Too soon the vision closes, too long remains. 
Like the last long talk one had with a lost friend. 
Whose memory lingers on, when friendship wanes. 
Better to stay at home! The towns one sees 
Trammel the day with stupid memories. 

[14] 



The Complaints 



IV 

I was a soldier once. How fear was then 

Mixed with bright honour and delightful pride! 

How different we were from other men, 

Who lived in houses and in houses died! 

How huge the morning was, before the sun 

Sullenly found us marching in the mist! 

And sleep was dark and deep when work was done 

And food awoke in us a greedy zest. 

But all that's over. I no more shall see, 

Quick to the word and ready to my hand. 

The smooth and easy moving company 

Marching in column on the heathery land. 

There's no pride now and fear's the fear that's bred 

Of money and suchlike maggots in the head. 

V 
The Empty House, i 
We walked all morning over furze and grass, 
And climbed steep tufted heights against the sun, 
Went down the shaven tracks, where rabbits pass, 
And unalarmed the scuttling pheasants run. 
There were no men in sight, save at a farm. 
Where, far below, we saw, about midday, 
Two ploughmen lying lapped about with warm 
Rank growings of the hedge. Green buds of may 
Hung over them unopened, primroses 
Were yellow round their bodies. On we went. 
Up a long slope through tangled coppices. 
Where half-fledged hazels on the pathway leant, 
Till suddenly we saw through thinning boughs 
The chimneys of an old long-lonely house. 

[15] 



The Complaints 



VI 

The Empty House, ii 

The door was gone, the jambs aslant, awry, 
The roof grown over with the mosses slow, 
The windows stared with blank and empty eye. 
Half the panes gone. The flagstones grinned below 
In gaping cracks. The foolish cattle came 
About the orchard, where the unpruned trees 
Held to the sky white boughs of trembling flame, 
And long wild grasses brushed about our knees. 
The dumb house called to us, the black, wide door 
Stood open for us long and stood in vain: 
Sighing we guessed those old walls held a store 
Of rest for us when we should come again 
Into the hollow, long and green and still — 
Then turned away to cross the further hill. 

VII 

I sat once in the curved arm of a tree 
Over the salty marsh, above the wide 
And misty mere, half river and half sea, 
Where faint low hills marked out the further side. 
Then time passed over as I bade it go. 
Fast when in joy my hurrying heart beat fast, 
And when sweet rest inhabited me, so slow 
I did not know if a day or an hour had passed. 
Thus I retarded or advanced the day. 
That subject and sweet minion of my will, 
But now with stubborn beats the hours go their way 
Like clouds in a steady wind and new hours still 
Loom up behind them and heavily go by 
In the same swift and daunting monotony. 

[16] 



The Complaints 



VIII 
I am sick of devices and of policies, 
Of the restless nerves, of the itches, aches and strains. 
And the tiresome long pursuit that balances 
My sluggish brain against their stupid brains. 
Oh, under beauty's whip I still can run 
And match my pace against another's pace; 
I only ask a little air and the sun 
Falling in warmth upon my upward face. 
But these dull rains of weather and the mind 
Shut the world from me in a sombre veil 
And memories of old weariness lie behind 
And hours to be, ill-nourished, clammy, pale. 
Lie on my forward journey and fill the way, 
As the dull day fades into a new dull day. 

IX 

When in the mines of dark and silent thought 
Sometimes I delve and find strange fancies there, 
With heavy labour to the surface brought 
That lie and mock me in the brighter air, 
Poor ores from starved lodes of poverty. 
Unfit for working or to be refined. 
That in the darkness cheat the miner's eye, 
I turn away from that base cave, the mind. 
Yet had I but the power to crush the stone 
There are strange metals hid in flakes therein. 
Each flake a spark sole-hidden and alone, 
That only cunning toilsome chemists win. 
All this I know and yet my chemistry 
Fails and the pregnant treasures useless lie. 

[17] 



The Complaints 



The well-made sonnet takes the azure sea 

Proud in her beauty as a halcyon, 

Her timbers chosen words, and melody 

Filling her sails of rhyme. She passes on 

In majesty and calm, but these my lines 

Are like a crazy and a leaky boat, 

Clumsily made of warped and twisted pines 

That hardly on the troubled waters float. 

Now comes an arrogant great wave ahead 

That swamps the blunted bow and spumes along; 

Into the storm I drift in doubt and dread. 

Patient, not brave, enduring but not strong. 

I know not on this huge and angry sea 

How far my wretched ship can carry me. 



[18] 



MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 



THE ONLY BEGETTER 

These are not fair, except you walk with me, 
These heathery paths upon the wind-blown steep; 

There could no magic in the wild-flowers be, 

Save from your heart they drew it, wild and deep. 

Round the vast world I turn and turn amazed 

Mine eyes grown keener for having looked on you 

And what in the world has pleased me and I have praised 
Gives you through me again the praises due. 

And have I other loves, what love have they 
Of mine, except what in your love I learnt. 

In whose eyes first I saw immortal day, 

In whose arms first my sorrow to joy was burnt? 

Save as you taught, I could not see nor sing 

And all I sing is only in your praise. 
And you the ultimate spirit of every thing 

That moves in my heart and colours my fleeting days. 



[21] 



SHADOWS 

Under the leaves of that tremendous oak, 
Where the low stars lie tangled, there is shade 
Delusive and the leafy hedges fade 
Into the darkness like a curling smoke. 

in the shadow there. 
Come with me, love, there let us two repair 
To mingle with the darkness and be lost, 
As somewhere viewless ghost with viewless ghost 
May meet, caress and shiver with sweet pain, 
Invisibly enamoured. So may we 
Lie in each other's arms invisibly 
And touch and see not, kiss and kiss again 

With lips obscure. 
That find their way as ardent and as sure 

In darkness as in day. 
Come! there the softly moving shadows play 
And wrap all vision up for dim delight. 
And soothe the straining eyes with oil of night, 
That charms the senses, sends all sound to sleep 
And knows for its anointed how to keep 
A magic darkness, an enchanted hush, 
Close in the shade of the uncertain bush. 



[22] 



Shadows 

Still the low stars shall waver overhead 
And low clouds hang upon the mighty tree, 
A softer darkness on our love to shed, 
Where we embrace and kiss invisibly 

But tangibly, 
And keener still, all senses being gone, 
Save only one bright sense — save touch alone. 



[23] 



JUST THAT HALF-HOUR 

Just that half-hour before you go to sleep, 
Fold your tired hands together and repeat 
All I have said to you of love today. 
All that you can remember, I should say. 
So many words and yet not all the same, 
Still simple words and words that leapt like flame 
Across the narrow gap between our hearts 
And brutal words, strong, naked, stiff and stark, 
Because our young love speaks in many ways. 
. . . We are so young, we know not what to say 
And yet the half-formed, ill-shaped words that fall 
From untrained novice lips are musical 
To untrained novice ears. If we are yoimg 
And say uncertainly what men have sung 
In long dead years and still we do not know 
All of love's arts, we'll be for ever so. 
Untrained, unskilled, for this is far more sweet 
Than love that treasures up and knows to keep 
The secret arts of loving and being loved. 



[24] 



WASTE 

So rich a treasure in yourself you bring, 

That some is spilt and wasted on the way, 

As low clouds, halting, on wild seas astray. 

Cheat the thick, thirsty blossoms of the spring. 

And some I waste. But in our later years 

We shall remember how, too prodigal, 

We let the precious drops of honey fall, 

And pay for them at last with useless tears. 

Ah, waste, waste, waste! However much there is. 

There's not too much for bare and mortal days, 

That now, receding in youth's golden haze. 

Seem dim but ever full eternities. 

But there's an end! Take heed, lest you and I 

Have wasted wealth to think on when we die. 



[25] 



THE RETURN 

I 
Now into hearts long empty of the sun 
The morning comes again with golden light 
And all the shades of the half-dusk are done 
And all the crevices are suddenly bright. 
So gradually had love lain down to sleep, 
We knew it not; but when we saw his head 
Pillowed and sunken in a trance so deep 
We whispered shuddering that he was dead. 
Then you like Psyche took the light and leant 
Over the monster lying in his place, 
Daring, despairing, trembling as you bent . . . 
But love raised up his new-awakening face 
And into our hearts long empty of the sun 
We felt the sky-distilled bright liquor run. 



[26] 



The Return 

II 
When love comes back that went in mist and cloud 
He comes triumphant in his pomp and power; 
Voices that muttered long are glad and loud 
To mark the sweetness of the sudden hour. 
How could we live so long in that half-light? 
That opiate shadow, where the deadened nerves 
So soon forget how hills and winds are bright, 
That drugged and sleepy dusk, that only serves 
With false shades to conceal the emptiness 
Of hearts whence love has stolen unawares, 
Where creeping doubts and dumb, dull sorrows press 
And weariness with blind eyes gapes and stares. 
This was our state, but now a happy song 
Rings through our inner sunlight all day long. 

HI 
When that I lay in a mute agony, 
I nothing saw nor heard nor felt nor thought; 
The inner self, the quintessential me. 
In that blind hour beyond all sense was brought 
Hard against pain. I had no body, no mind. 
Nought but the point that suffers joy or loss, 
No eyes in sudden blackness to be blind, 
No brain for swift regrets to run across. 
But when you touched me, when your hot tears fell, 
The point that had been nothing else but pain 
Changed into rapture by a miracle. 
In which all raptures known before were vain. 
Thus loss which bared the utmost shivering nerve 
For joy's precursor in the heart did serve. 
[27] 



SONG 

As I lay in the early sun, 

Stretched in the grass, I thought upon 

My true love, my dear love, 

Who has my heart for ever, 

Who is my happiness when we meet, 

My sorrow when we sever. 

She is all fire when I do bum, 

Gentle when I moody turn. 

Brave when I am sad and heavy 

And all laughter when I am merry. 

And so I lay and dreamed and dreamed. 

And so the day wheeled on, 

While all the birds with thoughts like mine 

Were singing to the sim. 



[28] 



THE DEBT 

When I am dead and you gather up my poems, 

Put them all in, all those that speak of you, 
Those that glanced at you in sundry disguises, 

Ariadne, Daphne and the nameless nymph, 
The flower-bright queen who ruled a king in China, 

And the country-girl that early lost her love. 
Bind up with them the frank and honest sonnets, 

The open songs, the unashamed odes. 
That spoke straight to you and told that I loved you. 

Described your beauty or called you by name. 
These are not ours; for what I took of beauty 

Belongs to our fellows for whom I write. 
The traces I have left on hill-top and valley 

Were made of the world and belong to the world; 
But more than half of the loveliness I captured 

Was yours at first and now is the world's. 
Our first hidden kisses and unskilled embraces 

And the fierier love whereto we attained 
Are lines on the chart whereby dreaming lovers 

Shall steer their hearts till the end of the world. 
When we are dead and our ashes are scattered. 

Let them say of us: She was and he wrote. 



[29] 



THE FIELDS ARE FULL 

The fields are full of summer still 

And breathe again upon the air 
From brown dry side of hedge and hill 

More sweetness than the sense can bear. 

So some old couple, who in youth 
With love were filled and over-full, 

And loved with strength and loved with truth, 
In heavy age are beautiful. 



[30] 



FOR REMEMBRANCE 

Let us remember how we came 

To Fletching in the trees, 
Where stood the high and misty down 

Between us and the seas. 

Let us remember how we crossed 

Ouse, Adur, Arun, three 
Slight rivers rolling in their broad 

Green valleys to the sea. 

Let us remember most of all 

When this bright air no more 
We breathe, what young and morning oaths 

On the high hills we swore. 



[31] 



CONTINUITY 

Long after we have ceased to be 
The sun will light in bush and tree 
And shine unchanged; the high turf hill 
Shall stand up in beauty still; 
And all the valleys that we knew 
Put on again the summer's hue, 
When we are gone, when we are gone, 
And are what green things feed upon. 



[32] 



THE STORM 

We wake to hear the storm come down, 

Sudden on roof and pane; 
The thunder's loud and the hasty wind 

Hurries the beating rain. 

The rain slackens, the wind blows gently, 
The gust grows gentle and stills. 

And the thunder, like a breaking stick, 
Stumbles about the hills. 

The drops still hang on leaf and thorn. 
The downs stand up more green; 

The sun comes out again in power 
And the sky is washed and clean. 



[33] 



A NIGHT-PIECE 



To Arthur Geddes 



Come out and walk. The last few drops of light 
Drain silently out of the cloudy blue; 
The trees are full of the dark-stooping night, 
The fields are wet with dew. 



All's quiet in the wood but, far away, 
Down the hillside and out across the plain, 
Moves, with long trail of white that marks its way, 
The softly panting train. 

Come through the clearing. Hardly now we see 
The flowers, save dark or light against the grass. 
Or glimmering silver on a scented tree 
That trembles as we pass. 

Hark now! So far, so far . . . that distant song 
Move not the rustling grasses with your feet. 
The dusk is full of sounds, that all along 
The muttering boughs repeat. 
[34] 



A Night-Piece 

So far, so faint, we lift our heads in doubt. 
Wind, or the blood that beats within our ears, 
Has feigned a dubious and delusive note, 
Such as a dreamer hears. 

Again . . . again! The faint sounds rise and fail. 
So far the enchanted tree, the song so low . . . 
A drowsy thrush? A waking nightingale? 
Silence. We do not know. 



[35] 



THE FLOWERING TREES 

The wandering year from day to day discloses 
First lenten lilies, then midsummer roses, 
And ends at last in sombre fantasy, 
About the season of the stripping tree. 
With asters and dark daisies and the strange 
Chrysanthemums. And so from change to change 
The shimmering months proceed in shifting dresses 
And strew the meadows and the wildernesses, 
For there in grass the daffodils are born 
And the wild rose-buds hanging on the thorn. 
All these are good, but this perplexes me, 
That blossom holds not longer on the tree, 
For in the morning the tall pear stands white 
With fragile petals that are shed at night. 
And the apple wears her trembling sweet array 
For hardly longer than a short spring day. 
Would they might further live or would that I 
Might see three springs without a break go by! 



[36] 



CLOUDS 

Over this hill the high clouds float all day 

And trail their long, soft shadows on the grass, 

And now above the meadows make delay 

And now with regular, swift motion pass. 

Now comes a threatening drift from the south-west, 

In smoky colours drest. 

That spills far out upon the chequered plain 

Its burden of dark rain; 

Then hard behind a stately galleon 

Sails onward with its piled and carven towers 

Stiff^ sculptured like a heap of marble flowers, 

Rigid, unaltering, a miracle 

Of moulded surfaces, whereon the light 

Shines steadily, intolerably bright; 

Now on a livelier wind a wandering bell 

Of delicate vapour comes, invisibly hung. 

Like feathers from the seeding thistle flung, 

And saunters wantonly far out of sight. 

God, who fiU'st with shifting imagery 

The blue page of the sky. 

Thus writ'st thou also, with as vague a pen, 

In the immenser hearts of dreaming men. 



[37] 



COLD 

The hard snow lies upon the hard round hills; 

Unbroken silence fills 

The empty valleys, and the unmoving air 

Is thickened by the cold. The northward plain 

Under a haze lies bleak and brown and bare, 

Untouched by snow, and at its westerly rim 

Loom dark and dim 

The Malverns on the mist like a huge stain. 

Turn, turn again 

From that wet country to the snowy hills, 

Where coldly in its silence the frost fills 

The deep and rounded valleys with a fine 

Jewel of air made crystalline. 

The cold has frozen the air, the air's a gem. 

Bright as a diamond filled with frozen light. 

From the hill-tops down to the plain's wet hem, 

Hard, yet clear to the sight. 

Move not — we cannot move, we are prisoners, 

Like that old traveller whom a later found 

Within a shining ice-block straitly bound. 

Staring immovably two hundred years 

Across the waste, white ground. 



[38] 



ON HOLMBURY HILL 

The narrow paths branch every way up here 
And cross and tangle and are nowhere clear 
And the empty sky, swept clean by a rainy breath, 
Smiles on our tortuous scrambling underneath. 
But here's the top, for round a sudden bend 
We stumble breathless on the imlooked for end 
And stare across the misty weald. Below 
The lonely trains through the wide country go, 
Each with its plume of steam. And westward, see, 
Past the far shoulder streams tumultuously 
A black and driven storm across the air 
And casts about the downs its troubled hair. 
Thick at the middle, at the edges thinned, 
Heeling over like a ship before the wind. 
It eats the weald up with a greedy mouth. 
Still, twenty miles or further to the south, 
Dimly and grandly Chanctonbury stands 
A moment clear above the blotted lands. 
It's gone. But still the blue and empty sky 
Smiles on over our heads unwittingly. 



[39] 



THE WISH 

Would that I were away now 

From the iron streets and the steel sky, 
For filthy are these streets in rain 

And hard and dusty dry. 
Harshly the 'buses clang their way. 

The people are ugly that go by; 
They hurry and their mouths are hard 

And they are hard of heart and eye. 

I stand on the station every day 

To catch the crowded, swaying train 
But if I only look down the line 

I turn away in sudden pain. 
For an elm stands at the curve of the rail 

That beckons me out, out again. 
Whether its leaves flash in the sun 

Or the bare boughs drip with rain. 



[40] 



The Wish 

The frost has my small town now 

And the street is iron there too, 
For it stands in a high cup of the hills, 

Right in the north wind's view; 
But the steel sky is beautiful there 

And the people that hurry there are few 
And the bare hedges that catch the sun 

Tremble with frosty dew. 

Though it be cold, I wish I were there 

To see slow winter move 
And the elms growing green again 

And the blackthorn that I love. 
Though spring's late there, it comes at last 

In the meadow and the thin beech-grove, 
And happy I might lie there in May 

With a long green bough above. 



[41] 



MID-WINTER 

Winter hems us round; 

A powder of dry snow lies lightly on the ground; 

The cold stings our flesh and our hearts, perhaps, as well; 

Every faintest sound 

Jars the quiet air like a harshly shaken bell. 

The turning of the year 

Was done a week ago, yet no light doth appear 

And still the long nights eat the comfort-giving day. 

Warmth draws not near; 

Not long enough to hearten us the sun doth stay. 

Gentle, gentle sun, 

Be our friend as of old for one day, only one. 

Breathe deceitful life into us and everything, 

Before happiness is done. 

The happiness we need for the long months till spring. 



[42] 



THE GLOW-WORM 

To Sylvia and Robert Lynd 

The pale road winds faintly upward into the dark skies, 
And beside it on the rough grass that the wind invisibly stirs, 
Sheltered by sharp-speared gorse and the berried junipers, 
Shining steadily with a green light, the glow-worm lies. 

We regard it; and this hill and all the other hills 
That fall in folds to the river, very smooth and steep, 
And the hangers and brakes that the darkness thickly fills 
Fade like phantoms round the light and night is deep, so 
deep, — 

That all the world is emptiness about the still flame 
And we are small shadows standing lost in the huge night. 
We gather up the glow-worm, stooping with dazzled sight, 
And carry it to the little enclosed garden whence we came, 

And place it on the short grass. Then the shadowy flowers 

fade, 
The walls waver and melt and the houses disappear 
And the solid town trembles into insubstantial shade 
Round the light of the burning glow-worm, steady and clear. 



[43] 



THE CATACLYSM 

When a great wave disturbs the ocean cold 
And throws the bottom waters to the sky, 
Strange apparitions on the surface lie, 

Great battered ships, stripped of their gloss and gold, 

And, writhing in their pain, sea-monsters old, 
Who stain the waters with a bloody dye, 
With unaccustomed mouths bellow and cry 

And vex the waves with struggling fin and fold. 

And with these too come little trivial things 

Tossed from the deeps by the same casual hand; 
A faint sea flower, dragged from the lowest sand. 
That will not undulate its luminous wings 
In the slow tides again, lies dead and swings 
Along the muddy ripples to the land. 



[44] 



IN ABSENCE 

My lovely one, be near to me tonight 

For now I need you most, since I have gone 

Through the sparse woodland in the fading light, 

Where in time past we two have walked alone, 

Heard the loud nightjar spin his pleasant note 

And seen the wild rose folded up for sleep 

And whispered, though the soft word choked my throat. 

Your dear name out across the valley deep. 

Be near to me, for now I need you most. 

Tonight I saw an unsubstantial flame 

Flickering along those shadowy paths, a ghost 

That turned to me and answered to your name, 

Mocking me with a wraith of far delight. 

. . . My lovely one, be near to me tonight. 



[45] 



THE RIDDLE 

I dream the marriage of the visible 

With the unseen the solving of all skeins; 

I dream that in my verse I read the spell, 

The last answer to the world's delights and pains, 

The gleaming leaves of beeches, the shade thrown 

By wavering ripples on the stream-worn stone. 

The glowing green of the young wheat, the cries 

Of birds, the lapsing sighs 
Of spring's warm airs in lucent hedge and tree, 
All these and with these too the discontent 
Of life's frustration and the vanity 
Of happiness too casually spent — 

All these I contemplate 
And would the seeming with the real fuse, 
The lordly vesture with the spirit mate. 
And publish in great verse the immortal news. 
Still the dream fades; and closer home doth dwell, 
Living with me, whether I sleep or wake. 
What neither here nor there my hand can take; 
Hidden in love lies the unriddled spell. 
Nearest the heart and there least scrutable. 



[46] 



THE SINGER 

In the dim light of the golden lamp 

The singer stands and sings, 
And the songs rise up like coloured bubbles 

Or birds with shining wings. 

And the movement of the merry or plaintive keys 

Sounds in the silent air 
Till the listener feels the room no more 

But only music there. 

And still from the sweet and rounded mouth 

The delicate songs arise, 
Like floating bubbles whose colours are 

The coloured melodies. 



[47] 



LADY GODIVA 

{A third version.) 

If the truth were but known, when she came at last 
To the bower's low door and the journey was past, 
Godiva slid from her palfrey and said: 
Only one with a curious eye in his head? 

For why had she gone with not even a shift 

Through the still grey streets, where her hair's gold drift 

On shoulder and breast and side made one 

With the bright veil cast on her by the sun? 

surely it had been braver, and sweet, 

To have lavished her beauty along the street. 

To have ridden in the eyes and the smiles of the crowd 

And to have heard their praises, muttered or loud. 

For else her ride was only a ride, 
Nothing done, nothing given, nothing beside. 
No shame, no sacrifice made, no pain. 
But a fresh, cool journey and home again. 

She frowned as she stood up bare in her bower, 
White as a pearl and fresh as a flower, 
Then smiled as she thought that there had been one 
And that Peeping Tom was better than none. 

[48] 



SEARCHLIGHTS 

(In the manner of Paul Fort.) 

searchlights, pierce the night with swords and drive 
the stars in ruin thence; the moon in cold indifference looks 
down upon your leaping hordes. 

Storm the old ramparts of the sky and shake the planets 
all awry, pull, if you can, the young moon down upon the 
house-tops of the town. 

The rosy sky adrowsing lay but now the night's alive 
with fire, new pulses in the veins of night, quick phantoms 
of a fiercer fire. 

Then fly, bright clouds, across the air and meet and 
interchange and merge and flood the sky with flame, sub- 
merge the planets in your ghostly glare. 

not with swords you now invade the ancient kingdom 
of the stars but armed with soft and fluent blades you break 
black heaven's tremendous bars 

and seize those pale and stately lights that move and 
move invisibly and whirl them up and down the sky, your 
followers, your satellites! 

And while across the night you fling your blue and 
brilliant garlanding, even the cold, indiff"erent moon moves 
gaily to a soundless tune; 

and all the shades that used to lie still in the silent streets 
and sleep, rise up and move fantastically in time with you 
and leap and leap ! 

[49] 



INVITATION 

girl with honey-coloured hair, 

And will you come and dance with me? 

The night is dark but you can spare 
Light from your eyes for both to see, 

And in the shade of trees divine 

Like a whirled torch your hair will shine. 

So dance apart and dance away; 

The rest about the lanterns gather, 
But there is light for two to play 

In any place where we're together, 
And there is soft long grass and shadow 
Beneath the rick across the meadow. 

For love in darkness is at ease 
And likes no candle save the light 

Of kindled eyes and glowing tress 
And bodies luminous with delight. 

The rest about the candles stay: 

O dance away! come away! 



[50] 



BALLAD 

He 
Oh, where are you, my own true love. 

And why are you not here? 
The nightingale amid the boughs 

Is flattering his dear. 

The night among the empty fields 

Lies like a child at rest, 
But empty, empty are my arms 

And light, too light my breast. 



She 

If you had known what I have known, 
The harsh word and the blow. 

The sour meal and the heavy task. 
You would not chide me so. 

0, I go on through all the day. 

And only hope at night. 
That I may slip out silently 

Without a sup or bite, 

[51] 



Ballad 

That I may find you in the dark, 

Wherein you will not see 
The angry red that rims my eyes 

And hums them hitterly. 

You have not felt what I have felt; 

This only have you known 
That it is sweet to walk with me 

In the dark fields alone. 

You only hear me speak of love 

And you have never heard 
My father's thin and grumbling voice, 

My mother's heavy word. 

Yet, ah, the most I know of you 

Is nothing more than this 
That when the painful day is done 

Your lips are good to kiss. 



[52] 



THE KING'S DANCER 

It was the king of the East, they say, who bought 

A slave-girl in the market of Baghdad. 

The merchants brought her thither, travelling 

A long way southward, from the wrinkled hills 

Of Georgia and sold her for a price. 

It was the king who saw her, as he passed 

At midday through the hot and narrow streets, 

And asked what sum they set on her. They told him. 

He bade his purse-bearer count out the coins 

And bring her home. But when he saw her first 

Among the fountains and the misty leaves 

In the cool garden of his golden house. 

He loved her. 

She would dance for his delight 
And when she entertained him thus, he stared. 
Stupid with pleasure. She was young and nimble. 
With subtly moving wrists of ivory 
And ankles finer and stronger than graven steel. 
She was the blossoming bough that stirs in spring, 
The pearl-white clouds that drift across blue heaven, 
The rainbowed wave that dies in colour on 
A sunny shore, the wheeling flight of birds 

[53] 



The King's Dancer 



Hardly descried against a dusky wood, 

The arrowy darting fish in quiet brooks; 

All the earth's myriad movements lay in her. 

The king sat in his jewelled seat and saw 

With deep, fixed eyes her motions flash and blend 

In convolutions of the astounding dance, 

And ever when she paused he signed her on, 

Silently staring. 

She danced all through the night, 
Now in slow measure mimed the rising moon. 
And now in a frenzy of light and hurrying steps 
The scattered and stricken clouds that fly in shreds 
Across the face of the moon and are lost in night 
And die in bitter space for love of the moon. 
Still with his grave deep eyes the king applauded. 
Silently nodding, and when she paused for rest, 
He raised his great arm up and with hairy fingers 
Urged her to dancing. Dark lines beneath her eyes 
And sharp lines at the corners of her mouth 
Grew as night grew and weariness invaded 
Even her limbs of pearl and steel. She wept 
Small and infrequent tears of pain, hard wrung 
From a brave heart and body. Still she danced 
And when dawn shot his blood-red flames across 
The shimmering fountains and drowned the garden in gold, 
She sank in a last, triumphant attitude. 
Her bosom open to the rising sun. 

So the king loved her and he built for her 
A bright pavilion hidden in high trees 

[54] 



The King^s Dancer 



And there at night he came to visit her, 

Without his retinue. Two Nubian, soldiers 

Alone attended him to ward away 

The attempts of the wicked and remained on guard 

While he was in. So when his pleasure bade, 

He came to her and watched her maddening dance 

Or took her on his knees and fondled her 

And praised her lovely body of pearl and steel 

With silent glances and silent straying hands, 

Her body that was, so often as she danced, 

A flickering flame, an insubstantial wreath 

Of linked movements. 



But he came one night 
Through the black shadows of the mighty trees. 
Black and immense beneath the risen moon, 
Unseen, unheard. The negroes crept behind, 
Blotted in shade. He picked his way to the gate 
And through the filigree of coiled gold 
He saw her little garden full of light. 
Wherein she danced alone and not for him, 
But with her moonwhite arms to the risen moon 
She off"ered her beauty and her sacred steps. 
An hour he stood unmoving; an hour she moved 
In measures of unbelievable loveliness, 
A phantasy of night, the essential wraith 
Of the moon, as though the light that filled the place 
Were thicker at the centre and there took 
A bodily shape and grew to be a woman. 
That danced and danced for silence and the moon. 

[55] 



The Kings Dancer 



But when the light was gone, he turned away 
And sought his negroes in the deeper shadow. 
They came to him, darkness in darkness disguised; 
He drew them close and spoke in a low still voice, 
And, pointing with his hand to the pavilion. 
Commanded: Let the woman's ankles be broken. 



[56] 



POSTSCRIPT TO A SATIRE ON MODERN ENGLISH 
POETRY 

Brooke's dead and Flecker; almost with them died 

Our new-born poetry in all her pride 

And one in Scyros sleeps and one at home, 

Brothers dissevered by the careless foam. 

Their youth bore blossoms; but an unnatural frost 

Gave to them youth for ever at the cost 

That neither should bear fruit nor ripen on 

To fertile age beneath a kindlier sun. 

Two yet we have; Hodgson and De la Mare 

In that dark year relenting death did spare, 

Sick of his work. Our poetry survives 

And bears new fruit in those most happy lives. 

Then let us cherish; and, loving them, let us learn 

To leave our railing and with new songs to burn. 



[57] 



FETE GALANTE; THE TRIUMPH OF LOVE 

Aristonoe, the fading shepherdess, 

Gathers the young girls round her in a ring, 

Teaching them wisdom of love, 

What to say, how to dress, 

How frown, how smile. 

How suitors to their dancing feet to bring. 

How in mere walking to beguile. 

What words cunningly said in what a way 

Will draw man's busy fancy astray. 

All the alphabet, grammar and syntax of love. 

The garden smells are sweet. 

Daisies spring in the turf under the high-heeled feet, 
Dense, dark banks of laurel grow 
Behind the wavering row 

Of golden, flaxen, black, brown, auburn heads, 
Behind the light and shimmering dresses 
Of these unreal, modern shepherdesses; 
And gaudy flowers in formal patterned beds 
Vary the dim long vistas of the park, 
Far as the eye can see, 

Till at the forest's edge the ground grows dark 
And the flowers vanish in the obscurity. 

[58] 



Fete Galante 



The young girls gather round her, 

Remembering eagerly how their fathers found her 

Fresh as a spring-like wind in February, 

Subtler in her moving heart than sun-motes that vary 

At every waft of an opening and shutting door; 

They gather chattering near, 

Hush, break out in laughter, whisper aside, 

Grow silent more and more, 

Though she will never chide. 

Now through the silence sounds her voice still clear, 

And all give ear. 

Like a silver thread through the golden afternoon, 

Equably the voice discloses 

All that age-old wisdom; like an endless tune 

Aristonoe's voice wavers among the roses, 

Level and unimpassioned, 

Telling them how of nothing love is fashioned. 

How it is but a movement of the mind, 

Bidding Celia mark 

That light skirts fluttering in the wind 

Or white flowers stuck in dark. 

Glistening hair have fired the dull beholder 

Or telling Anais 

That faint indiff'erence ere now hath bred a kiss 

Denied to flaunted snowy breast or shoulder. 

The girls attend, 
Each thinking on her friend, 
Whether he be real or imaginary. 
Whether he be loving or cold, 

[59] 



Fete Galante 



For each ere she grows old 

Means to pursue her joy and the whole unwary 

Troop of their wishes has this wild quarry in cry, 

That draws them ineluctably, 

More and more as the summer slippeth by. 

And Celia leans aside 

To contemplate her black-silked ankle on the grass; 

In remote dreaming pride, 

Rosalind recalls the image in her glass. 

Phillis through all her body feels 

How divine energy steals, 

Quiescent power and resting speed, 

Stretches her arms out, feels the warm blood run 

Ready for pursuit, for strife and deed. 

And turns her glowing face up to the sun. 

Phillida smiles 

And lazily trusts her lazy wit, 

A slow arrow that hath often hit; 

Chloe, bemused by many subtle wiles. 

Grows not more dangerous for all of it. 

But opens her red lips, yawning drowsily, 

And shows her small white teeth, 

Dimpling the round chin beneath. 

And stretches, moving her young body deliciously. 

And still the lesson goes on. 
For this is an old story that is never done 
And now the precept is of ribbon and shoe, 
What with linens and silks love finds to do 
And how man's heart is tangled in a string 

[60] 



Fete Galante 



Or taken in gauze like a weak and helpless thing. 

Chloe falls asleep; and the long summer day 

Drifts slowly past the girls and the warm roses, 

Giving in dreams its hours away. 

Now Stella throws her head back and Phillis disposes 

Her strong brown hands quietly in her lap 

And Rose's slender feet grow restless and tap 

The turf to an imaginary tune. 

Now all this grace of youthful bodies and faces 

Is wrought to a glow by the golden weather of June; 

Now, Love, completing grace of all the graces, 

Strong in these hearts thy pure streams rise. 

Transmuting what they learn by heavenly alchemies. 

Swift from the listeners the spell vanishes, 

And through the tinkling, empty words. 

True thoughts of true love press, 

Flying and wheeling nearer. 

As through a sunny sky a flock of birds 

Against the throbbing blue grows clearer and clearer, 

So closer come these thoughts and dearer. 

Helen rises with a laugh; 
Chloe wakes; 

All the enchantment scatters off like chaff. 
The cord is loosened and the spell breaks. 
Rosalind 

Resolves that tonight she will be kind to her lover, 
Unreflecting, warm and kind. 
Celia tells the lessons over, 
Counting on her fingers — one and two. . . . 

[61] 



Fete Galante 



Ribbon and shoe, 

Skirts, flowers, song, dancing, laughter, eyes. . . 

Through the whole catalogue of formal gallantry 

And studious coquetries. 

Counting to herself maliciously. 



But the old, the fading shepherdess, Aristonoe, 

Rises stiffly and walks alone 

Down the broad path where densely the laurels grow, 

And over a little lawn, not closely mown, 

Where wave the flowering grass and the rich meadow-sweet. 

She seems to walk painfully now and slow 

And drags a little on her high-heeled feet. 

She stops at last below 

An old and twisted plum-tree, whose last petal is gone. 

Leans on the comfortable, rugged bole 

And stares through the green leaves at the drooping sun. 

The tree and the warm light comfort her aging soul. 



On the other lawn behind her, out of sight, 

The girls at play 

Drive out melancholy by lively delight 

And the wind carries their songs and laughter away. 

Some begin dancing and seriously tread 

A modern measure up and down the grass. 

Turn, slide with bending knees and pass 

With dipping hand and poising head. 

Float through the sun in pairs, like newly shed 

And golden leaves astray 

[62] 



Fete Galante 



Upon the warm wind of an autumn day, 
When the Indian summer rules the air. 

Others, having found, 

Lying idly on the sun-hot ground, 

Shuttlecocks and battledores. 

Play with the buoyant feathers and stare 

Dazzled at the plaything as it soars. 

Vague against the shining sky. 

Where light yet throbs and confuses the eye, 

Then see it again, white and clear, 

As slowly, poisedly it falls by 

The dark green foliage and floats near. 

But Celia, apart, is pensive and must sigh 

And Anais but faintly pursues the game. 

An encroaching, inner flame 

Burns in their hearts with the acrid smoke of unrest; 

But gaiety runs like quicksilver in Rose's breast 

And Phillis, rising. 

Walks by herself with high and springy tread, 

All her young blood racing from heels to head, 

Breeding new desires and a new surprising 

Strength and determination, 

Whereof are bred 

Confidence and joy and exultation. 

The long day closes; 

Rosalind's hour draws near, and Chloe's and Rose's, 
The hour that Celia has prayed, 
The hour for which Anais and Stella have stayed. 
When Helen shall forget her wit 

[63] 



Fete Galante 



And Phillida by a sure arrow at length be hit. 

And Phillis, the fleet runner, be at length overtaken, 

When this bough of young blossoms 

By the rough, eager gatherers shall be shaken. 

Their eyes grow dim, 

Their hearts flutter like taken birds in their bosoms, 

As the light dies out of heaven. 

And a faint, delicious tremor runs through every limb, 

And faster the volatile blood through their veins is driven. 



The long day closes; 

The last light fades in the amber sky; 

Warm through the warm dusk glow the roses 

And a heavier shade drops slowly from the trees. 

While through the garden as all colours die 

The scents come livelier on the quickening breeze. 

The world grows larger, vaguer, dimmer, 

Over the dark laurels, a few faint stars glimmer; 

The moon, that was a pallid ghost, 

Hung low on the horizon, faint and lost, 

Comes up, a full and splendid golden round 

By black and sharp-cut foliage overcrossed. 

The girls laugh and whisper now with hardly a sound 



Till all sound vanishes, dispersed in the night, 
Like a wisp of cloud that fades in the moon's light 
And the garden grows silent and the shadows grow 
Deeper and blacker below 

The mysteriously moving and murmuring trees, 

[64] 



Fete Galante 



That stand out darkly against the star-luminous sky; 

Huge stand the trees, 

Shadowy, whispering immensities. 

That rain down quietude and darkness on heart and eye. 

None move, none speak, none sigh. 

But from the laurels comes a leaping voice 

Crying in tones that seem not man's or boy's 

But only joy's. 

And hard behind a loud tumultuous crying, 

A tangled skein of noise, 

And the girls see their lovers come, each vieing 

Against the next in glad and confident poise 

Or softly moving 

To the side of the chosen with gentle words and loving 

Gifts for her pleasure of sweetmeats and jewelled toys. 



Dear Love, whose strength no pedantry can stir. 

Whether in thine iron enemies 

Or in thine own strayed follower. 

Bemused with subtleties and sophistries, 

Now dost thou rule the garden, now 

The gatherers' hands have grasped the scented bough. 



Slow the sweet hours resolve and one by one are sped. 
The garden lieth empty. Overhead 
A nightjar rustles by, wing touching wing, 
And passes, uttering 
His hoarse and whirring note. 
The daylight birds long since are fled, 

[65] 



Fete Galante 



Nor has the moon yet touched the brown bird's throat. 

All's quiet, all is silent, all around 

The day's heat rises gently from the ground 

And still the broad moon travels up the sky, 

Now glancing through the trees and now so high 

That all the garden through her rays are shed 

And from the laurels one can just descry 

Where in the distance looms enormously 

The old house, with all its windows black and dead. 



[66] 



WHO KNOWS HOW BEAUTY SPRINGS 

Who knows how beauty springs 
Out of the world of things, 
To take the eyes with sudden flame 
And vanish whence it came, 
High above things that vex, 
Fear, covetousness, spite and sex? 

Lost in the busy day, 

In thoughts that harry and press, 

I knew a young girl passed 

And heard her swinging dress; 

And when I turned I saw. 

Raised on a stair. 

Only her ankle, finely poised 

Against the coloured air. 

Who that has known can tell 
How in this world of things, 
Suddenly in the dark day. 
Eternal beauty springs? 



[67] 



THE WILD GOOSE CHASE 

How long a day through thickets and over stones 
And over broad red furrows fresh from the plough, 

And hills where low the wind-bent heather drones 
And swift airs whistle round the sky-line bough! 

How the wind clutched at flesh and bowels and bones! 
How breathless they were all day, how weary now, 

When in the town beneath a fading light 

They sought a lodging for their transient night. 



What in what frenzy did they thus pursue? 

Eternal wisdom or the baser gold 
Or pleasures of the senses ever new 

Or rarer spiritual ecstasies still untold? 
From dawn till dusk, with sun, wind, hills, rain, dew. 

They were burnt or they were weary or they were cold 
Or wet or dirty. Still they chased untired 
A thing not named but endlessly desired. 



But when the chase was done at last, they came 
Into the darkling town with empty hands; 

Their faces through the dusk burnt with a flame 

Wind caught, their feet were heavy from marshy lands. 

[68] 



The Wild Goose Chase 



They brought with them no answer to their proud claim, 

No prize given over to their loud demands; 
They found an inn, where windows long and low 
Streaked the thick darkness with a golden glow. 

Inns of our nights, where we have sat together, 

Boots off and dreaming at the magic fire! 
There the mind's free, the spirit casts its tether 

The thoughts in concert dance and do not tire, 
Till sleep with silent foot and sudden feather 

Brushes his drugs across the joy and desire 
And all long night is darkness and deep peace, 
In the old inn, walled round with silent trees. 

The happy good find this when the day is spent. 

When they have filled their day with seeing and knowing. 

Here from their chase they came and found content 
And reaped at night good grain of early sowing, 

Laughter by tears and joy by sorrow lent 
And gifts on unexpected breezes blowing — 

We too shall sit, after youth's fret and rage, 

In the comfortable bar of middle age. 

Yet while light burns and the air aches in our veins 

And we are capable of anger and love, 
Slow fires of the senses, swift play of the brains 

And tenderness and friendliness enough. 
We will be out in the winds, the dews, the rains, 

And find our meaning in such transient stuff. 
While through sharp, veering gusts of tears and mirth, 
We chase our wild geese over the windy earth. 

[69] 



HYMN TO DESIRE 

To Linda Chesterman 

Not only when thou art terrible, Desire, 

Do we acknowledge thine unshaken power; 
Thou liv'st not only in the raging fire. 

Thou liv'st as fully in the slightest flower. 
Now the moon fails, that radiant so long 

Rode the black, burnished levels of the night, 

Serene and lovely witness of delight; 
And now I catch my breath and hold my song. 

That cannot longer than the heaven be bright, 
For the faint clouds that now obscure the moon 
Darken my mind's serenity too soon. 

Thus is it ever. Still the shade will creep 

On lovely things, who knoweth how or whence? 

Like quick dreams crowding in a healthy sleep, 
A sudden pulse, an urgent influence. 

Thus the light wrinkles on an azure pool 

Spread outward from the fall of one frail leaf, 
The first the tree weeps off" for future grief. 

In the sad hour when summer's cup is full. 

Long move the waters, though the touch be brief, 

And break in shards that image of the sky 

They showed before in blue tranquillity. 

[70] 



Hymn to Desire 



Who knoweth how or whence desire will come, 
The wind that wakes the foam-line on the sea, 

That breathes new feeling into spirits numb 
To try again an exquisite agony? 

Maybe when in the idle world of men. 
We poise in words upon the perfect hour 
Or, lonely, stoop to touch a lonely flower, 

At the serenest point of noon or when 

A black cloud breaks into a silver shower; 

Out of all these and out of more than these 

The influence comes that shatters all our ease. 

I too have prayed to feel desire no more. 
To find in little things a small content, 

No longer from the green and friendly shore 
To swim, a waif in the huge element. 

My spirit darkens, my heart beats fitfully; 
A power descends upon my soul that shakes 
The calm of tranquillizing song and breaks 

The doom-dark wave of passion over me 
And every tumult in my being wakes; 

A power not friendly to me but divine 

Troubles the current of my trembling line. 



[71] 



Hymn to Desire 



In all the things we love the ambush lies 

And most of all in love. Who has not known 

Under the glance of the beloved's eyes 

How painfully his deep unrest has grown? 

Out of sweet things we would a refuge make, 
A certain harbour for the flying mind, 
Each worldly solace to our fortune bind, 

Comfort from love, counsel from friendship take; 
Yet in the roof and furnishings we find. 

Hid like a snake, whose fangs bear venomous fire. 

Thou hast thy secret shelter made, Desire! 



most of all in love! Contentment there 

Is but the single moment ere decay. 
Precursor of a long and dull despair. 

Frets the fruit's golden rind and flesh away. 
Some wear love's crown a day and see love go, 

Having been content; but they whose loves endure 

Ache with an ill love has not strength to cure, 
Strive for perfection, stumble still and know 

Too well that love is ever insecure. 
That in the midst of pleasure hunger sits 
And feeds upon the tortured heart and wits. 



[72] 



Hymn to Desire 



Immortal agony! what canst thou be, 

If that thou be not the immortal spur, 
Which, when we halt in sloth or luxury 

We faint and failing mortals must incur? 
Thus comes the wind upon a mountain-lake 

That lay beneath the sun, serene and bland; 

And now at touch of the triumphant hand 
A thousand colours on the surface wake; 

The ripples move and curl from land to land 
And, while they struggle and the tyrant blows, 
The tumult of the sunlit water grows. 



The faint clouds drift and drive across the moon, 
Veil and unveil her distant loveliness; 

The ecstasy will sink and leave me soon, 

Yet still the vague, bright intimations press 

Remorselessly upon my flagging mind. 

And to these whips my shuddering flesh lies bare 
And to these lights my aching eyeballs stare — 

I wince, my courage leaves me, I am blind! 
spare me utter death but mostly spare 

The dull revengeful fire, the mocking prize 

Which in the heart of all fulfilment lies, 



[73] 



Hymn to Desire 



For all fulfilment let lament be made, 

Save for the pause and turning which is death; 
Weep for those spirits who on shows that fade 

And earthly copies waste their fitful breath, 
Forgetful of the far, ideal skies. 

They know not how the awakened soul can be 

Borne above sorrow and felicity 
To hold brief converse thus with Paradise 

And catch the signals of eternity; 
They know not that desire is but a spray 
Thrown from the fountain of eternal day! 



The moon is gone, the moon is down and dead ; 

A last dull gleam in the horizon trees 
Bears witness to the glory that is shed; 

Now through the vacant sky a rambling breeze 
Murmurs invisibly. The wings now fail 

That bore aloft my struggling load of song. 

I faint, I falter. Be thou now not long, 
sleep unwaked of owl or nightingale, 

Nor let not in on me the urgent throng 
Of dreams, but be thou full and calm and deep, 
For more than this I crave not, blessed sleep! 



[74] 



A DIALOGUE 

Long have I striven and now am overwrought 
With sleepless nights and days whose blackened suns 
Make pale my blood and drain my spirit of fire, 
Mine eyes of light. 

— But spring will come again. 

— But not again that old ideal spring, 
The essence of the Aprils that have been 
And live as memories. All that is lost; 
Now, even in my six and twentieth year, 
Like winter twilight in a little room, 
Over the wide expanse of wood and field. 

Slow darkness thickens in the room of the world. 
Which with the lamps of science and poetry 
I must illuminate as best I can. 

— But there is life beyond this darkening life. 
Somewhere behind the narrow arch of blue 
Dwell the imaginable verities 

Which you have seen and whose remembered forces 
Draw your sick heart in longing from your breast. 

— They are there indeed but I am cast on earth. 
After how long and how headlong a fall 

I here reside! where there is nothing true 
But shadows and faint copies that suggest 
Dimly and brokenly the real world, 

[75] 



A Dialogue 

Whence we are exiled here. 0, how can I 
See the truth shine beyond phantasmal shows 
And thin the splendour of the gorgeous earth 
And still be glad for either? 



— But your spirit 
Remembers yet the home from which you came 
And gives ideal beauty to the fragments 
And wreckage of this unpieced, fantastic life. 
— Would it were so! The world in which we live 
Was once my pleasure. Midday gleaming elms 
And silent oaks with brooding night in their boughs 
And the low-chanting aspens and the holy 
Unreal thorn ablaze with silver flowers, 
Whether amid the odorous meadows set 
Or on the sides of smooth and lofty hills, 
Delighted me and then were nought but trees. 
The rayless blue of heavy August skies 
Pleased me, and the clouds that floated stiffly past 
Were solid toys that vision touched and played with. 
I found my joy in beautiful forms and in 
The fresh and supple body of my young love, 
Her voice, her eyes, her arms about my neck. 
And in all girls that passed me in the streets, 
Light with the grace of youth and happy pride. 
In colours and music and the lovely words 
That then could bind my sorrows up with spells. 
Such sorrows as then I knew. But now through these 
Shines the intolerable sum of truth, 
Gleams through the misty veil 

[76] 



A Dialogue 

Of the world's beauty and makes poor and thin 
This life's imperfect grace. 

— Yet do you not 
Strive for perfection still, 

Strain and glow warm in straining for the truth? 
Are not the joys you had from earthly things 
Transformed by musing on the original? 

— Would it were so! 

— Yet have you no inner faith 
That from the mist of illusion you will at length 
Emerge and move about the real world? 

— Thence have I fallen far and farther fall 
Headlong in ruin through these empty cheats. 
Why should I hope (since hope is also a cheat) 
Ever to find again that tangled way 

I followed hither from eternity? 

Still through the waste of dark and whirling time, 
Through shadowed years and sombre centuries, 
My spirit goes, like a lost child in a wood, 
Crying for home amid the unfriendly boughs 
And straying further from the invisible road. 



[77] 



MEDITATION IN JUNE, 1917 



How can we reason still, how look afar. 

Who, these three years now, are 
Drifting, poor flotsam hugely heaved and hurled 

In the birthday of a world. 
Upon the waves of the creative sea? 

How gain lucidity 
Or even keep the faith wherewith at first 

We met the storm that burst. 
The singing hope of revolution's prime? 

For in that noble time 
We saw the petty world dissolve away 

And fade into a day 
Where dwelt new spirits of a better growth, 

Unchecked by spite and sloth. 
We saw, and even now we seem to see 

In fitful revery, 
Like hills obscured and hid by earthly mist. 

The hopes that first we kissed: 
We see them — catch at them and lose again 

In apathy and pain 
What maybe was (though it once seemed ours to hold) 

No more than fairy gold. 
[78] 



Meditation in June, 1917 



II 

We pity those whom quick death overtakes, 

Though they will never see 
How hope dissolves and founded loyalty shakes 

Traitorously, piteously. 
They lose at most and death is voiceless still 

Nor whispers in their ears 
When they are lying on the deep-scarred hill 

What our calm silence hears. 
They lose all various life, they lose the day, 

The clouds, the winds, the rain. 
The blossoms down an English road astray 

They will not see again; 
Great is their loss but more tremendous things 

To us at home are given, 
Doubts, fears and greeds and shameful waverings 

That hide the blood-red heaven. 
They knew no doubt and fear was soon put by: 

Freely their souls could move 
In deeds that gave new life to loyalty, 

A sharper edge to love. 
They are the conquerors, the happy dead. 

Who gave their lives away, 
And now amid the trenches where they bled. 

Forgetful of the day. 
Deaf, blind and unaware, sleep on and on, 

Nor open eyes to weep, 
Know nought of what is ended or begun 
But only and always sleep, 

[79] 



Meditation in June, 1917 



III 

We said on that first day, we said and swore 

That self should be no more, 
That we were risen, that we would wholly be 

For love and liberty; 
And in the exhilaration of that oath 

We cast off spite and sloth 
And laboured for an hour, till we began, 

Man after piteous man, 
To lose the splendour, to forget the dream 

And leave our noble theme. 
To find again our lusts and villainies 

And seek a baser prize; 
This we have done and what is left undone 

Cries out beneath the sun. 
How glad a dawn fades thus in foggy night. 

Where not a star shines bright! 



[80] 



Meditation in June, 1917 



IV 

Is all then gone? That nobler morning mood 

When pain appeared an honour and grief a gift 

And what was diSicult was also good? 

Are all our wishes on the waves adrift? 

The young, the eager-hearted, they are gone, 

And we, the stay-at-homes, are tired and old, 

Careless how carelessly our work is done, 

Forgetful how that morning rose in gold 

When all our hearts cried out in unison. 

Triumphant in the new triumphal sun. 

How dull a night succeeds! how dark and cold! 

We will arise. Oh, not as then with singing. 

But silence in our mouths and no word said. 

Though wracks of that lost glory round us clinging 

Shame us with broken oaths we swore the dead, 

But steadfast in humility we rise. 

Hoping no glory, having merited none, 

Through the long night to toil with aching eyes 

And pray that our humbler hearts may earn the sun. 



[81] 



ELEGY 
{For J.N., died of wounds, October, 1916.) 

So you are dead. We lived three months together, 
But in these years how absence can divide! 

We did not meet again. I wonder whether 
You thought of me at all before you died. 

There in that whirl of unaccustomed faces, 

Strange, friendless, ill, I found in you a friend — 

And then at last in these divided places. 
For you in France and here for me the end. 

For friendship's memory was short and faithless 
And time went by that will not come again, 

And you are dead of wounds and I am scatheless 
Save as my heart has sorrowed for my slain. 

I wonder whether you were long in dying, 

Where, in what trench and under what dim star, 

With drawn face on the clayey bottom lying. 
While still the untiring guns cried out afar. 

I might have been with you, I might have seen you 
Reel to the shot with blank and staring eye, 

I might have held you up ... I might have been you 
And lain instead of you where now you lie. 
[82] 



Elegy 

Here in our quietude strange fancy presses, 
Dark thoughts of woe upon the empty brain, 

And fills the streets and the pleasant wildernesses 
With forms of death and ugly shapes of pain. 

You are long dead. A year is nearly over. 
But still your voice leaps out again amid 

The tangled memories that lie and cover 

With countless trails what then we said and did. 

And still in waking dreams I sit and ponder 
Pleasures that were and, as my working brain 

Deeper in revery will stray and wander, 
I think that I shall meet with you again 

And make my plans and half arrange the meeting, 
And half think out the words that will be said 

After the first brief, careless, pleasant greeting. . . 
Then suddenly I remember you are dead. 



[83] 



THE HALT 

" Mark time in front! Rear fours cover! Company — hxilt! 

Order arms! Stand at — ease! Stand easy." A sudden 
hush: 

And then the talk began with a mighty rush — 
" You weren't ever in step — The sergeant. — It wasn't my 

fault — 
Well, the Lord be praised at least for a ten minutes' halt." 

We sat on a gate and watched them easing and shifting; 

Out of the distance a faint, keen breath came drifting, 
From the sea behind the hills, and the hedges were salt. 

Where do you halt now? Under what hedge do you lie? 

Where the tall poplars are fringing the white French roads? 
And smoke I have not seen discolours the foreign sky? 
Is the company resting there as we rested together 

Stamping its feet and readjusting its loads 
And looking with wary eyes at the drooping weather? 



[84] 



THE FIRELESS TOWN 



THE FIRELESS TOWN 

Beneath a rising wood there was a town 
That had in ancient times its own renown, 
For in a valley rich and warm it lay 
And there through interwoven boughs the day 
Came softly stealing and burning brighter, till 
The broad sun rose above the topmost hill. 
A long way west, the broad and level plains. 
White with the dew or filled with morning rains. 
Stirred in the dawn and shook a myriad leaves 
Over the flanks of silky-coated beeves, 
And there great fields of green or yellow corn 
With lifting heads the seasons did adorn. 
While acres much more odorous lay between, 
Bee-pleasing clover and the scented bean. 
And orchards, where long loaded boughs hung down, 
Parted the open country and the town. 
It was a portly place, because therein 
A many merchants mighty gain did win 
By bartering the farmers' rich increase, 
Or wool much wealthier than the Golden Fleece, 
Wherewith they built great halls of yellow stone 
And set tall windowed gables thereupon 
And hoarded in their houses gold and gem 
And silk and silver vessels. One of them 
A daughter had, of whom the story is, 

[87] 



The Fireless Town 



In beauty blest and maiden innocencies. 
Her name was Helen and her heart was proud, 
For though much loved she had not loved nor bowed 
To be a toy for any man or hear 
Love's subtle offers urged by any whisperer. 
Yet in the flesh she was divinely made; 
Her honey-shining hair in heavy braid 
Clung round her temples, as the sunset lies 
On snowy mountain ridges and her eyes 
Burnt like the heaven's warm and candid grey 
When August spends in fire his dreamy day; 
Straight as an arrow, as a birch-tree tall, 
Where maidens met she overcame them all. 
So she was made; but how she looked and moved 
Could not be told by them that most her loved. 
They watched her with the young girls, when she came 
And danced with them, a light and errant flame. 
Cool fire that flickered and was not consumed 
But burnt more radiant as the dark trees gloomed 
With drooping night. They worshipped her when she 
Advanced her narrow ankles delicately 
Or turned on flashing heels or quickly span 
Around the ring with light skirts swaying as she ran. 
When she was walking, it was strange how went 
Her nimble pace upon the pavement. 
How easily she climbed the steepest hill 
And laughed upon the crest, untroubled still; 
She spoke as though a nightingale had rested 
Within her rising bosom and there nested, 
Contented with one climate all the year, 
Where every morning still gay summer did appear. 

[88] 



The Fireless Town 



In many suitors found she lovers none: 
Of all that prayed to her she chose not one. 
At nightfall by the lanthorn light she stayed 
While her companions of the sun delayed 
With other friends to saunter in the wood 
So softly that the light awakened brood 
Of crying birds that harboured there slept on 
Nor knew what hid, delightful things were done, 
What gifts refused and what at last were given 
Beneath the friendly, close and leaf-embroidered heaven. 
Some maidens came back silently and some 
Loud in their joy along the dark streets home 
And some came weeping; but ere all were come 
Helen slept dreamless in her narrow bed. 
Her body lying straight, her quiet head 
Still on the pillow and her quiet eyes 
Peacefully rid of day's quick vanities. 
Though all men praised, her father praised her more 
Because he slept at night with unlocked door, 
Unshuttered windows and a heart at rest, 
While all his fellows at the inn confessed 
That bars and bolts must keep their daughters in 
And roving dishonour from the anxious kin. 
Young men reviled what gave him quiet blood; 
Pale were their sullen faces who had stood 
All night beneath her window, that all night 
Denied the least reply of flattering light. 
Grated no sound, however harsh or small. 
But blindly stared and answered not at all. 
They lingered in the dark and Helen lay 
Unmoved in careless sleep until the day 

[89] 



The Fireless Town 



Dispatched them hollow-eyed and unappeased away; 
She rose alone, even as alone they slept, 
Nor knew what thankless vigil had been kept. 
Proud was the fortress, strong the citadel. 
Jealous the girl and kept her treasure well. 
But thorniest flowers are pulled and even the fortress fell. 
At that time in the town the custom was 
Early on May Day through the gate to pass, 
Maidens and youths in amity together, 
To go upon the hillside and to gather 
Dew-heavy may and what else flowers might be 
Hidden in brakes or flaunting on the tree. 
With these they hung the houses and the day 
Was spent in country feasting and in play. 
Hiding and Seeking, Kissing in a Ring, 
Here is a Thing and a very Pretty Thing, 
Or Who's Your True Love Now? And when they played 
At suchlike pastimes, every holdback maid 
Blushed but grew kinder and grew rosy warm 
And sighing leaned upon her lover's arm; 
All but the proudest beauty must relent 
And yield herself in fee of that day's merriment. 
But the expected hour, which all the year 
Lit Helen's lovers like a beacon clear, 
Found her so chilly yet that she went out 
Unpartnered in the happy pairing rout 
Or kept a girl on either side of her. 
Or mixed so gaily in the march and stir 
That none of the young men could find a place 
To be sole gazer on her laughing face. 
To speak aside with her in trembling tones 

[90] 



The Fireless Town 



Or dare in love what only love condones, 

The lawless hand's caress or wanton speeches, 

Wherewith the suitor claims what he beseeches, 

They went out singing through the portal wide 

And past the runnel at the meadow-side. 

The mill-wheel's clean and bubbling freshet, where 

Long water-weeds hung out their trailing hair. 

Past the deep mill-pool, green and dark and still, 

That threw them back their pictures, past the mill 

And up the lane, where first the climb began 

And down the chalky ruts clear gushes ran. 

Now by the roadside came the shining water. 

Now went from hedge to hedge with muffled laughter 

And spread across the path and stopped the way; 

Then there was mocking and assumed dismay. 

And lifted skirts and fearful steps and some 

Were borne across but Helen would not come 

A gift to any helping arm. She leapt 

As lightly over as the young men stepped, 

Standing a moment poised upon the edge. 

Have you not seen upon the grassy ledge 

Beside a pool, a slender lily swaying 

At every turn of wind and each obeying. 

As though in mind to leap it? Thus she stood 

Under the first green shadows of the wood. 

But now through scattered trees and luminous shade 
Of lighter leaves they saw the open glade 
Upon the hill-top, where light harebells grew 
Flecking the open turf with airy blue. 
The troop dispersed and running up and down 

[91] 



The Fireless Town 



Broke boughs and gathered flowers to hang the town; 
These in their baskets garnered violets new 
And fresh anemones that sparkle through 
The wood's light shade and glimmer in green air, 
Those threaded daisies or on darkest hair 
Laid garlands of the azure bells that fade 
And still refuse to be light trophies made 
Or grace a dwelling or exist an hour 
On maiden bosoms sweeter than the flower 
But sink in death away and cheat the stronger power. 
Now Helen laid smooth hands upon a branch 
That broke and hid her in an avalanche 
Of trembling green and red. She tossed away 
To waiting lads the mute and captive spray 
And went where blossoms of the starry white 
Nodding in careless liberty upright 
Presumed to mock upon the neighbouring red 
That still they lifted an unconquered head. 
These made her helpless prisoners, soon she went 
Deep to the knees in the green wonderment 
That bordered all the wood and there she found 
In folds and hollows of the broken ground 
By lustrous settlements and colonies 
The misty milkmaids and sunny primroses; 
All these she plucked and could not have enough 
But filled her skirts with bales of shining stuff. 
However long and willingly they toiled, 
Yet would these treasures not have been despoiled, 
Though they had harvested till odorous night 
And sought for shutting blooms by glow-worm light; 
But now the sun, well risen in the sky, 

[92] 



The Fireless Town 



Shone on the osier baskets trembling high 
And bade them homeward. So they took the way, 
Mindful what yet was due of mirth and play; 
And as they travelled happy songs were sung, 
Maidens and men in company, all young, 
All that brave youth together, all the young! 

How excellent is youth and April blood, 
That is by every diverse fancy wooed 
And moves as easily and merrily 
As April breezes in a hawthorn-tree! 
How good youth found that day to love devoted. 
Well in his calendar with red marks noted, 
A stage of time, a milestone in the year. 
Whereby nought sad or evil came anear 
But only careless joy and joyous things, 
Events of mark and golden happenings! 
Yet in the town was one with whom the day 
Unnoticed and unhonoured burnt away, 
Who lay so deep in dusty dreams and care 
He had not known that May's first dawn was there. 
Young Michael, for his woe, inherited 
Strange figured folios from his father dead. 
That set him seeking for a dismal truth 
And cast a shadow early on his youth; 
For though not thirty of his years were done 
He lived and worked and ate and slept alone. 
Renouncing every sweet companionship 
And every bond of heart and hand and lip 
For those uncouth and more than doubtful spells, 
Whereof he sought to tame the obstinate syllables. 

[93] 



The Fireless Town 



Long he would sit with painful, swimming eyes 
On herbals and black-letter mysteries, 
Or drowse himself in black and sleepy smoke 
From crystal crucibles, whence he awoke 
With aching forehead and with trembling limbs, 
Searching the lore that swelled the unholy seraphims. 
Outside his window grew a little tree 
That was not propped or pruned but, blossoming free, 
Knocked all that morning on the dusty pane 
Its dear beseeching flowers to him in vain. 
He saw it not and even smelt it not 
But plunged in thornier thickets of dark thought 
Pursued in heat through mental bog and briar 
A phantom quarry, a Jack o' Lantern fire, 
Soiling in those foul roads his youthful spirit 
To gain a doubtful prize of little merit. 
When noon with burning hand was come and gone 
And lower stooped and lower the unhasting sun 
In regular departure and the day 
Fruitless for him had almost passed away, 
Slant through his window came a radiance 
That flickered on his books in careless dance, 
Dazzling his eyes and teaching novel lust 
For pastime to the grey and learned dust. 
He laid aside the worm-worn manuscript 
Whence bitter honey painfully he sipped, 
Marking his place with one brown finger. Still! 
What music ranted from the distant hill 
And moved the valley air to murmur sweet. 
Breathing unwonted perfume in the street, 
As though a golden light a golden sound should meet 

[94] 



The Fireless Town 



And marry their vibrations in the air, 
Nor light nor sound, but like the lucky pair 
Salmacis and her lover, joined to grow more fair! 
That music filled his heart with new unease; 
Gazing he saw amid the lower trees 
With unbelieving eyes a happy throng, 
That ran downhill in exultation strong, 
Holding aloft great branches of the may 
And casting countless blossoms by the way. 
Still as he gazed they grew; no more they seemed 
Fantastic shapes at drowsy midnight dreamed 
But breathing flesh of mortal excellence 
And bodies to be seized by human sense. 
Michael awoke; the new blood in his veins 
Roused, like the gush of early summer rains, 
A thirsty channel into busy growth 
Till blossoming joy took root in obscure sloth 
And ran into the street with eyes aflame 
Sweet as the rose and thornier than the rose! 
A day will come in studious life, when he 
Who pawns youth's heritage for the rusty key 
To chambers full of learning's grimy treasure 
Pauses and longs to know a cleaner pleasure; 
So Michael found in half a moment's time 
That all his empty years were out of rhyme 
With his green age and widowed of delight 
His tedious day and single pillowed night. 
Then in a trance he stood and wondering 
Heard nearer to his house again the maidens sing. 
Whereat his senses started and he knew 
What to his five and twenty years was due 

[95] 



The Fireless Town 



That yet was never paid. He cast adown 
Book, crucible and tattered magic gown 
And ran into the street with eyes aflame 
As on their road the May Day revellers came, 
Flushed with the spoil and treasure of the year 
And crowned and garlanded with scented gear. 
They checked their onward course and stared at him, 
Being so light and gay and he so grim; 
He seemed with inky hands and matted curls 
A gnarled tree in a field of flowerlike girls, 
A shaggy comet in a starry night. 
So blazed his eyes and so his hair upright 
Circled his head with dark and waving flame. 
So dusky red he grew in diffidence and shame. 
They swirled in stream about, but Helen stayed 
Under his glance, erect and unafraid, 
And seeing her, he thought that he could see 
His fortune in her bright proximity, 
All kindliness and innocence and truth 
And all the comeliness of living youth. 
She laughed at him : Michael — for your name 
I know, and something of your dusty fame — 
Will you come with us till the day be spent? 
But hearing her so light and insolent. 
He felt a strange unrest, a foolish fire 
Light in his heart's tough wood and rise and twire. 
Flickering in the tempest of his blood 
But burning still the hard and stubborn wood. 
Till longing made a fury of sparks and heat 
That blinded him and, swaying on his feet. 
He kissed her mouth and broke in a panic away 

[96] 



The Fireless Town 



With eyes of fear and breathing of dismay. 

She panted too; the rest were silent, till 

A girl behind sent up a mocking trill 

Of thin clear laughter and all their laughter broke, 

Louder and louder. He woke and Helen woke; 

He was dying back from frenzy and she stood 

Whitefaced in anger but with troubled blood; 

He stammered, she said nought. Then at the last 

The youths behind were eager to be past 

And pushed their careless way by Michael's house, 

Leaving him staring and inglorious, 

Forgetful of the studies that had been 

So long his spirit's solely loved demesne. 

His precious drops and powders and the fume 

That still with hard, stale savour filled his room. 

Therein he now amazed in drowsy fit 

Sought to bring back to hand his wayward wit. 

That journeyed in a new and cloudier clime, 

As though by drugs translated, whither time 

Will years upon the perfect minute stay 

Or cram a coloured lifetime in a day. 

Long there he sat in revery and long 

Sought to forget he had heard any song. 

So all might be as erst, but found the charm too strong. 

Meanwhile the gay, vociferous multitude 
Awoke the town with clamorous prelude; 
Joy's drums in all the ardent voices rolled 
And echoed deafening from the houses cold; 
The tall and silent elm-trees on the green. 
That edged the street, bowed loftily their serene 

[971 



The Fireless Town 



Great heads, and yews in gardens walled around 

Shook stiffly but responsive to the sound. 

Then all the houses woke and doors were thrown 

Wide open, that the music might be blown 

Through the low rooms and cool wide passages 

To leave behind a sweet and subtle trace 

In faint-flowered curtains and old padded chairs 

And, lingering at the dark turn of the stairs 

Where children falter going up to bed, 

Endure with homely scent to ease their dread. 

The town took back its youth again, as though 

A golden river on grey sand should flow 

And drew them here and there and parcelled out 

In house and church and hall the laden rout 

To strew their gifts. And now the happy night 

Drew near to them already, vaguely bright. 

With longed-for victories and promised joys. 

That morning pledged amid the sun and noise, 

In darkness and in silence to be fulfilled. 

When the lanthorns paled and the loud pipes were stilled. 

But Helen was not with them. In her room. 
Close curtains drawn, she brooded in the gloom 
That could alone her angry roses hide 
Or the white blossoms of her shaken pride 
And where unheard she could both sigh and weep. 
Thinking by this to lull her shame to sleep. 
But all in vain, since she could not forget 
What had been seen of all, the kiss that yet 
Burnt on her pallid mouth and printed there 
A stain that weeping could not all outwear. 

[98] 



The Fireless Town 



So from her sighing she at last arose: 
Again upon her cheeks the insulted rose 
Burst into strange and sudden blossoming 
And now her anger spread a rapid wing. 
This is the tale of smutched innocence, 
That, whatsoe'er the injury or whence, 
She half detects a felon in her breast 
And deems her enemy the fault hath guessed 
And so, twice angered and with double fire. 
Rebukes him in her own, her traitorous desire. 
Her lamp, being lit, gave her no comfort new, 
But shone too clearly out and sent all through 
The shadows of her small and quiet room 
A tempered radiance and a golden gloom 
That, falling on her fingers, let her see 
How, clenched and tight, they trembled piteously. 
Ask not how she, being gentle and so young. 
Could in her virgin thoughts have that among 
Which now she fostered to a bitter fruit, 
For shame in honest minds is oft the root 
Of evil things. Who knows what storms they are 
That blot out suddenly the sailor's star 
Of peace in his own soul? They rise unbidden 
From distant seas and icy mountains hidden 
Far off in lands untraversed. Reason then 
Drives blindly on till calm returns again, 
Nor guesses whither but despairingly 
Gives up the rudder to the tyrant sea 
And shuddering hears the hard-tried timbers start 
In that fine ship she navigates — the heart. 
So, anger being master, Helen took 

[99] 



The Fireless Town 



The yellow flyleaf of an ancient book 

And wrote in haste what words she had to write, 

Nor would not read them through but quickly doused the 

light, 
And ran with panting bosom down the stair 
To find unseen her chosen messenger. 
She sent him off and fled in haste again 
To hide from all her mingled fear and pain 
And to determine, if much brooding might, 
What end should come at last to that eventful night. 

A garden underneath her window lay 
That in the cool and breathless end of day 
Sent up sharp perfumes climbing to her sill 
To take the shadowy air by waves and fill 
Her room with ghosts of flowers. The lane below 
Lay empty, but the town was louder now 
With silver quiring and with wanton cries. 
That ever in a maddening strain would rise, 
Clearer and stronger, till the troubled air 
Streamed in a turmoil and the lights aglare 
Laid out before the gust their long and tossing hair. 
All this she heard and saw, and she could see 
Her young companions go by two and three 
Across the lane's dark entry, where the grass 
Grew in the flags, whereat a faint: Alas! 
Rose in her bosom, neither willed nor owned. 
But still by hotter spite to be atoned. 
And yet the lane below unvisited 
Lay silent till the quick, triumphant tread 
Of Michael sounded there, whose happy eyes 

[100] 



The Fireless Town 



Looked upward in a certain lover's guise; 

For him her messenger had found alone, 

Drowsing in dulness, by his black hearthstone, 

And given him her letter, which, being read, 

Set the swift blood a-spinning in his head. 

Then he had risen and with care had drest. 

And niceness, that the beating heart confessed, 

And gone to keep the tryst, as fine as one 

Could be who never yet on love's wild ways had run. 

He passed amid the gay and careless crowd. 

As little noticed as a midnight cloud. 

And heard no syllable of all their song 

That shook the dusky trees and died in long 

Reverberations down the alleys deep 

Where workday tools forgotten lay asleep; 

He passed the lighted windows where the old 

Amused the night with stories manifold 

And bragging legends of their days of gold; 

He passed young daring girls, who mocked him after 

And loosed light arrows from the bow of laughter; 

He passed them in a lonely happiness 

And turned into the dark lane's quiet recess. 

Then Helen waiting saw him come and set 

A candle in her window. Through the wet 

And odorous hedge, he ran towards the sign, 

Coming out wreathed with tangled trail and vine. 

Convolvulus and creeping briony. 

And stood before her garlanded. But she 

Leant down to him and whispered through the still 

Sharp-scented air that lay upon her sill 

A word of honeyed consequence, wherein 

noil 



The Fireless Town 



His name afloat, like flowers in heady wine, 
Enchanted him to stammering and threw 
His sense unguarded from the level true. 
How shall I come to you, sweet love? he cried. 
But she with finger on her lip replied: 
Hush! for the night is young and all awake. 
And none must know how we our secret pleasure take. 
What should I do if any found you here? 
You are too loud a lover. 0, I fear 
Lest in your eagerness you should proclaim 
To all at once your triumph and my shame; 
In silence take what secretly is given, 
Nor shout your victory to the listening heaven. 
But breathe it on my breast and I shall hear 
What could not be so sweet cried in the loud mob's ear. 
How shall I come to you, he cried again, 
Softer, since love in him did love restrain, 
Whereto she answered: You shall say, not I; 
Can wizards not by incantation fly 
Astride a slip of thorn? But in despair 
He raised his wild arms up and said to her: 
My craft avails me not, for I have learnt 
No gallant's tricks like these. I never burnt 
Till now to climb a maiden's window nor 
Studied the cantraps some have made therefor. 
What shall I do? Must we the whole night long 
Gaze at a distance? Surely I am strong 
And I will climb to you or find a way. . . . 
He ceased and no word further could he say, 
Being by love made dumb and made a fool. 
Such as he is who is just escaped from wisdom's rule. 

[102] 



The Fireless Town 



But while in misery his body shook 

Helen adjured him with a merry look 

And said she had not brought him there in vain 

To see her window and go home again, 

And thereupon let down to him a great 

Basket, that had through half the year for freight 

The wizened winter-apples, packed away 

And growing sweeter and fewer every day, 

But now must hold a heavier load instead, 

A lover going to a lawless bed. 

I'll draw you up in this, she breathed; but he 

Looked at the height and stood uncertainly 

Doubting her strength, until she laughed again: 

Love pulls the rope with me and halves the pain, 

And night is wasting, Michael, and I have made 

An easy pulley for my better aid. 

Come, if you truly love me! He thereat 

Hastily in the swinging basket sat. 

And as she drew he dug his nails between 

The wall's great stones a little way to win. 

And as she laboured he bore double strain 

Till all his muscles ached with twice her pain. 

And double agony his heart possessed 

To hear the loud breath in her toiling breast 

And think that she should stiffen every limb 

And tax her blood to give herself to him. 

Much ere he came in thoughts that hurried past, 
She mused what she must do with him at last, 
And in perplexity had put aside 
Her many plans for taking down his pride 

[103] 



The Fireless Town 



And still had made no plan; but when he came 
So close to her, his eyes revived her shame 
And sent new anger running in her breast, 
For now his foolish heart, by hope caressed, 
Moved him to praise her in a voice that shook 
And stare on her with so possessive look 
And glance so greedy and assured that he 
Burnt up at once her doubtful leniency. 
Are you spent, love? he asked her, being aware 
That now the basket rocked in middle air. 
Tie up the rope and rest. But she replied: 
Rest easy, Michael, for the rope is tied 
And we are safe together, you and I. 
Therewith, into the room's obscurity. 
She disappeared and silence settled down 
On that one alley in the noisy town. 
When she had gone, he lay awhile at ease, 
Whispering fondly inward foolishness, 
How lovely she was, how made for him to adore 
With that young heart which never loved before, 
How high a spirit and what a gallant fire 
Had leapt impetuous to his desire. 
How her mind marched with his against delay 
And tumbled all the barriers from the way! 
He sighed in the darkness, smiled and was content, 
Nor cared at first how long the minutes went 
Brushing his face with slow, enchanted wings 
And filling his mind with magical new things, 
He lay so close to all he coveted 
That love cried truce and reason, lightly sped, 
Entered upon a new and drowsy reign, 

[104] 



The Fireless Town 



Wherein there was no movement nor no pain, 

But honeyed longing that without a smart 

Brims up the intricate vessel of the heart, 

And promised happiness that lightlier lies 

Than rose-petals on the most burning eyes. 

Long he lay motionless in such a trance. 

But acrid fire began again to advance 

And stung him, that he had not heard above 

A new beginning of the toils of love, 

Nor words of joy nor any promises. 

Which as the gift itself the unpractised lover please. 

Then in that stillness fear got room to throw 

A panic in his heart and check the flow 

Of the delighted blood; one dark thought sped 

From heart to hands. What if the girl were dead. 

Slain by the labour that for love she bore? 

Michael leapt up; the basket trembled sore. 

Yet sorer shook his limbs, and as he stared, 

Darkness replied above and he despaired. 

While thus he languished in his bitterness 
Behind his back a murmur 'gan to press 
From the singing far away, towards the lane, 
Strayed echoes of the festival refrain 
That louder grew until the very sound 
Did from the high and shadowy walls rebound 
And wake him from the stupor, so that he 
Turning beheld the alley suddenly 
Filled with a shouting mob, whose torches flung 
Light in the dark air, where amazed he hung, 
And in whose web of interwoven noise 

[105] 



The Fireless Town 



He heard first one and then another voice, 
That cried his name aloud and bade him climb 
The further way nor longer wait on time 
But of himself to assure felicity. 
Then, at the cawing of that rookery. 
Blood filled his splitting brain, his burning eyes 
Darkened and swelled, he felt his arteries 
Straining and giving and his hands clenched tight 
Upon the swaying rope. But still the light 
Derisive roar pleased itself below. 
Numbing his brain in his pride's overthrow. 
He would have fled them, but he could not flee. 
Would have ignored them, yet could not but see, 
Till at the last anger possessed him too 
And pride returned and courage from them grew, 
And, turning on the crowd, he would have spoken 
But by the noise beneath his words were broken, 
Thrown high and scattered in the silent night 
That lay acalm above the crowd's delight. 
Silence! he cried again. His mockers still 
Derided him, men loud and women shrill. 
But the third time he used such vehemence. 
Such thunder in his voice and so immense 
A gesture of his spread and threatening hand 
That all grew quieter, as the poplars stand 
Whispering between the onslaughts of the storm, 
And stared like fools upon his swaying form. 
Then in that silence mightily he said: 
I will be gentle, though about my head 
Your brutal mockeries spin and though I see 
The trick the wanton girl has played on me. 

[106] 



The Fireless Town 



I will be gentle. Helen! make an end, 

Lest I should do what you can never mend. 

Free me and let me down. A quietness fell, 

Wherein the trees' low sigh was audible 

And nothing else. He heard no sound above, 

No sign of her repentance or her love; 

The rope hung still and taut. But now beneath. 

First came a whisper, then a rising breath, 

And lastly uproar, wherein no word was. 

But as the wind and wave contend in tongueless cause. 

But that great crying fell as it began; 

From group to yelling group a silence ran 

And laid a finger on the mouths that cried 

Till in low murmurings the tumult died 

And Michael spoke again, slow, heavy words. 

That floated through the hush like ominous birds. 

I have not learnt, he said, the trivial spell 

That can a woman's mutinous heart compel. 

But I who am weak in dealing with desire 

Can yet constrain earth, water, air and fire. 

And, for this town hath mocked me and since one 

Hath hurt me closer than all your taunts have done, 

I make return! Henceforth no fire shall live 

Within your houses and the fugitive 

Light flame that dances in your lanthorns shall 

To blackened nothing in an instant fall. 

You elements, with whom I dwelt at ease. 

Come to my aid, confound mine enemies! 

Out, friendly light and warmth! Out, every flame! 

Back to the yokeless aether whence ye came! 

[107] 



The Fireless Town 



Thereon a strange and dizzying thing befell 

For, quicker than the magic takes to tell, 

While still they gaped, they suddenly were aware 

How from their torches into the still air 

The bright fire slipped and instantly was gone. 

Like burning-plumaged coveys, journeying on 

From human haunts to fabled Araby. 

They gazed about and everywhere could see 

The shining casements blackened and gone blind, 

And in that lightless waste no man could find 

His neighbour or his friend. Then down they threw 

Their useless lanthorns and the panic grew; 

The weaker cried and wailed with piteous voice 

And the dark lane re-echoed with the noise 

Of broken men and women, whose dismay 

Spared not each other as they fled away 

From Michael's wrath and left him hanging there. 

And now, with dreadful whisperings, despair 

Ran through the town, as erst the darkness ran. 

And laid on every house its gloomy ban; 

Flint lost its virtue and the friendly flame 

Lay in the pebble whence before it came; 

There was no moon, the stars were faint and few 

And still the dreadful night was hardly half-way through. 

Then in a pitiful agony hurried all 
To that dark shadow hanging on the wall 
And begged with breaking voices and loud sighs 
That he would turn on them compassionate eyes 
And give them back again their patron, flame. 
They knelt to him and prayed and felt no shame, 

[108] 



The Fireless Town 



And sobbed and stormed at him in unison: 
But when their maudlin beggary was done, 
He answered coldly: What you now entreat 
Cheaply you valued, when you deemed it meet 
To mock one greater than your hearts have known. 
Suffer together now, as I alone, 
And have the heart to be as silent as I, 
Lest I should turn on you my mockery. 
They answered him: We are humble, we are broken, 
We kneel to you and offer you as token 
Our outstretched hands and bended heads and ask 
That you will set on us some heavy task 
To prove our single heart. But he replied: 
Were I to yield, your tears would not be dried. 
The dust be hardly scattered from your knees 
Ere you would charm away your promises 
More easily than I your lanthorns quelled. 
A deep low groan from all that concourse welled 
And sank again in harsh and sullen sound. 
Like lost winds on a waste and barren ground. 
Dumbly they waited; silently he stood. 
Raised as a judge upon that multitude; 
Sound slept and time stood still; neither he nor they 
Knew how far night had gone along her way 
Before he spoke again : little creatures. 
That dare not face the night, without all nature's 
Coddling and cherishing and friendliness 
But catch affrighted at her swinging dress 
For warmth and shelter and as little know 
Herself as the dumb beasts that creeping go, 
I'll stand no more between you and your nurse; 

[109] 



The Fireless Town 



A little thing shall take away my curse. 
When I have ended what is here begun 
And my long journey up the wall is done, 
And I have taken what is promised me, 
Once more in torch and lanthorn burning free 
The gallant flame shall scare this cold inanity! 
All shuddered and none spoke; their whispering 
Moved in the darkness like a living thing, 
A tense and deeply breathing animal 
That could through tight and trembling bodies crawl 
And draw existence from their agony. 
From no man's throat, and yet from all, a cry 
Rose thinly up and offered him his will 
With their submission. But he heard them still 
With scorn and answered not. And Helen lying 
Hid in her chamber mused upon that crying, 
How once these maddened men were hers to rule 
And each before her stood an equal fool. 
Stammered when she spoke and simpered at her smile 
And sought with tedious homage to beguile 
Her heart impregnable. She could not hear 
Their vows below for cold and sickening fear 
That drowned her spirit, yet, in that forlorn 
Deep night, a sudden doubtful star was born, 
A flickering spark she scarcely could descry 
That moved and winked and cheated still her eye. 
And yet at last, the more she thought thereon. 
With steady and with friendly radiance shone; 
For she imagined in that dreadful hour 
An iron courage and a golden power 
And Michael standing over all the crowd, 

[110] 



The Fireless Town 



Strong as they weak and quiet as they loud. 

She saw nought else but this; she did not see 

A trembling and a ruffian two or three 

That came to draw the too long idle rope 

And grin at her from time to time, in hope 

Through the thick shade to see her blushing deep 

Or hear her praying them or hear her weep. 

Her thoughts were what the tree's are, when the wind 

Strips the light petals off and leaves the fruit behind. 

Outside they saw with hot and starting eyes 
Slow in the dark the heavy basket rise 
And saw a shadow from the shadow climb 
And slip into the casement. Tardy time 
Stood still again and so immense a hush 
Reigned in the town that an uneasy bush 
Rubbing its boughs together seemed as though 
A mighty storm in mighty trees did blow; 
So long the moment was that men believed 
Night's cog was slipped or time's old hour-glass thieved, 
That day's sweet advent was for ever past 
And that the rolling world was stayed at last. 
Then one cried: Look! and all together cried. 
For this man in his lanthorn light had spied 
And that had seen a blackened kitchen-fire 
Glow faintly into crimson and expire 
And glow again. Then in a rush of light 
The gabled houses stood out tall and bright. 
Lit by a lucid flood that overshone 
All that the human eye can gaze upon. 
Nor could they lift their lids again to see 

[111] 



The Fireless Town 



Until it sank in peaceful radiancy. 

And then a glow ineffably serene, 

Sleeping on every torch and wick was seen, 

A friendly light, so friendly, that a strange 

Beatitude, a soft and melting change. 

Soothed the wild heart and filled the uneasy breast 

With golden hopes of joy and silver hopes of rest. 



[112] 



THE QUEEN OF CHINA 
A Poem 

" How we spun 
A shroud of talk to hide us from the sun 
Of this familiar life" 



CHARACTERS 

The King 

The Prince 

The General 

The Chamberlain 

Two Italian Travellers 

An Old Scholar 

Three Doctors 

A Young Courtier 

Two Sentries 

The Prince's Servant 

The Queen 
Two Slave Girls 
A Girl's Voice 



Place. Various parts of the Royal Palace of China. 
Time. In the Fourteenth Century of the Christian Era. 



FIRST ACT 



FIRST ACT 

Courtyard of the Royal Palace in the capital of China. 
Enter the King and the General. 

General 
You are in haste, my lord? 

King 

I still must haste 
To catch the light before it flies from me, 
And now the council gathers. You are called: 
Will you not come? 

General 

I have dispatches. 



King 

Well? 



To read in council? 



General 

Ours alone at first, 
Not to be judged on hastily nor thrown 
Unthought on to the common ear, so grave. 
So large with menace are their languages 
And yet so full of chance. . . . 

[117] 



The Queen of China 



King 

Of chance? Speak on; 
I listen. 

General 

These are from the Tartar border 
Where now the wretched villages in flame 
Prophesy woe to come with smoky tongues. 
The foe is out, 

His army largely set and ravaging 
Our lands unshielded. Up and down the marches 
Our scanty soldiers move in desperate packs 
And hold their line with peril. 

King 
And the army? 
Are all our troops at move? 

General 

An hour ago 
I set our messengers on every road. 
The governors are stirring to the work, 
My missives dropping in the cantonments 
Inflame their hearts already. Have no fear 
Nor doubt success. We'll push them back again 
Until their host in ruin overtopples 
Like a young foolish horse that rears and falls. 
Crushing his rider under him. We'll have them down. 

King 
Why, this is well. 

[118] 



The Queen of China 



General 

And yet not well enough. 
For now we may with just excuse and much 
Indulgence of our purpose scald the sore 
That festers in our side. I'd raise an army, 
More than the border hath these twenty years 
Trembled beneath the tread of. Then their land 
Shall lie unfended from our blow and crouch 
Beaten and bloody, begging clemency. 
And offer tribute as a recompense 
And be a province. 

King 

These are weary schemes 
And bloody projects and we two are old. 
Our days in the field are done, our lances much 
Out of the fashion and our banners set 
Below the newer time. Vain words to me! 
A speech for younger soldiers — for my son. 

General 
Your son. . . . 

King 
You speak with such a heavy tongue 
The two reluctant syllables, your mouth 
Trembles, your eyes avoid my eyes — 



General 

Your son. 



King 
What would you say then? 

[119] 



The Queen of China 



General 
My dear lord, you know 

King 
My son's not whole, my son is heavy and sick. 
He hath a dropsy of thought, his swoln affections 
Clog him and hamper him. I know it all. 
I have observed him and you observing him; 
Often the same thoughts lay in our two brains, 
By silence and by shame dissevered. Gladly 
I'd give an army to him for the toy 
That princely youth delights in. 

General 

dear Lord! 
Stands it on this? Must we attend his sickness? 
Will you not take the battle for an ease 
Of all your care in watching over him? 

King 
I am too old 

And age hath sucked my plenitude of desire; 
The vessels are dried up. 

Wherein the hot and maddening lymph resided 
That urges men to conquest. This will be 
A mighty war for glory and renown — 
You speak an ancient tongue, a dialect 
My lips have lost the use of. I have known 
Glory, the toy that young men die to purchase, 
Gilded with blood and cried up with men's groans, 
An object of desire, a precious taste, 

[120] 



The Queen of China 



But I've no relish in it, being old. 

If my son's blood were young as are his years. 

General 
Wise huntsmen sometimes take an ailing hound 
Out to the coursing-places that he knew 
And let him scent the quarry for a cure. 

King 
Well like a hvmtsman spoken! 

General 

He that knows 
Nature of dog and horse is wise enough 
To govern many men. 

King 

Is this not he, 
That slowly walks along the avenue? 
Speak with him warily. I'll try your cure 
And trust your skill in venery. Here he comes. 
{The Prince enters.) 

Prince 
I wish you happiness, dear father. 

King 
And I 
Wish you more spirit and a cheerful look 
To front the morning with. 

[121] 



The Queen of China 



General 

Good prince, brave youth, 
Are you a youth indeed or older than we? 
For on your brow anticipating age 

Hath traced his plot of ground and marked his jointure 
Before his claim's allowed by natural sense 
Or any judgement. 

Prince 

I am sad, I own. 
And look not brightly out nor think not bravely. 

King 
What ails you then? 

Prince 

Why, sir, I cannot tell 
What strange infection spreads along my veins 
And drowses in my heart. I am not sick. 
Not fevered, coughing, palsied, none of these, 
Nor visited with pain. 0, let me rest. 
For my disease hath touched the will of youth 
To be at work and, were my labour done 
In sixty heavy years, I could not be 
More weary or more out of love with life 
And lifeless in my love. 

King 
What, boy, you love? 

Prince 
Only the world and what therein doth stand 
I counted formerly, as lovers count 

[122] 



The Queen of China 



Their mistresses' most delicate delights, 
But earth no longer pleases my dull eyes. 
Let me alone, most gracious lord, for this 
Is but a male green-sickness, want of blood 
That duly not performs its proper task 
To feed the passions. 

General 

When you carried arms 
And sat your horse and led your troop, you looked not 
So faintly mooded. You were strong of hand 
And sometimes I could see your parted lips 
Whisper a silent song to company you 
In time with the horse's gallop. We have ridden, 
Where the dim morning struggled with the mist 
On the wide plain, before the ranked army. 
Galloping side by side and marshalling 
The fiery soldiers. You were happy then, 
Quick to command and rapid in your sight. 
And no disease fretted your body thus 
With cruel teeth to make an ornament 
Of woe and stricken flesh. come with me. 
For there's adventure yet and troops to lead 
And smoke and dust to snuff where men contend. 

Prince 
I have forgotten all you speak of now. 

General 
The Tartars insolently ride their horses 
Over the ash of our burnt villages! 

[123] 



The Queen of China 



King 

If arms could win my son from his disease, 
I'd make a war for medicine and reckon 
The ravaged border but a blister set 
To draw the kingdom's humours. 

Prince 

Dear my lord, 
King reverenced, father loved, and both obeyed 
With all humility and all affection, 
If I am slow in taking up the word 
That now you cast to me, I have no fear. 
I would not set one penny on my life 
Nor take a step aside from waiting death: 
But I am spiritless and ill at ease 
And would not wear my mail nor sit my horse. 
I am sick, I am sick and will not touch the lance 
Nor lift the sword nor set my foot in stirrup 
But still with drooping head and unlit face 
Go pacing on my ways about the court 
And let the months run by uncounted still. 

General 

May the gods give you a more morning mood 
And something better rising in your heart. 
You were not so. 

King 

Nor I, when I was young. 

[124] 



The Queen of China 



General 
No, by the gods! You were a lusty boy, 
Save when a lady flouted you. Shame upon you, 
Dear prince, to languish so without a cause! 
No wound, no ailment nor no hurt of love 
Can you advance in reason. You confess 
That you have borne a thin and general love 
To all creation and dispersed your heart 
Unthriftily on the world and thus you are sick 
Of mere philosophy. Man, love your horse 
And tend your arms and cherish one beside, 
A lady, any lady, and be glad 
A soldier wants so little to be glad. 

Prince 
I am no soldier, I! 
I find no sweetness in the emulation 
Of giving death or braving it. 
Count me an emptied man, a youthful dotard, 
Who totters down his early years and fades 
Out of the bright-aired places that he knew, 
Too dull to be regretful. So's my humour, 
Still to be sad, still to be unaroused, 
And let my passions rot or rest in peace. 

General 
But hear what's now on foot. A moment yet! 
You have not understood. 

King 

We cannot move him. 
I dreamt — we both were foolish. Let it pass 

[125] 



The Queen of China 



And let the years have sway. In his high season, 
Fair unadorned youth will scare these mists 
And show himself with burning face arisen 
Over the astonished country ere we die. 
I'll leave unstirred the waters of my grief: 
These arguments are like the wands wherewith 
Boys puddle in a stagnant pool and raise 
Bubbles of nauseous air, from slime corrupted, 
That chokes the heart with sickness. Did I linger 
Too much on this or think it past all hope. 
The happiness that fills my flowing days 
Were poisoned at the root. 0, plead no more! 

{Enter the Chamberlain.) 

Chamberlain 

Great king, the dragon-throne is set 
And ringed with all your guards in golden mail. 
The reverend mandarins are crowding in 
And lose their several wisdoms in the crowd 
With pushings, stampings and revilings. Now 
The Queen is on her way. 

King 

Come, my old friend; 
My son, your place, though dumb, is at my side. 

Prince 
My place in council suits well with my mind. 
For there the young are licensed to be dumb. 

[126] 



The Queen of China 



Geneeial 
This is a damnable virtue in a youth 
To obey so readily what age prescribes. 
Youth should be chidden and give cause to chide; 
Iron's not forged except it glowing be. 

King 
Let us go in, old fellow. Youth refuses 
The high adventure we have offered it. 
There are no wars now, swords are out of fashion. 
{They go in. Two Sentries take up their posts at the gate.) 

1st Sentry 
There are wars going. Did you hear the general? 

2nd Sentry 
I heard something. I heard two old men bewailing their 
age and that they might not lead us youngsters to be killed 
like willing horses under their palsied legs. Make no account 
of it all but lean on your pike, my lad, and take it easy. 
The pike is wood and we flesh, it senseless and we weary; 
let it do our work. 

1st Sentry 
Stand up to your work, you crook-backed soldier. The 
wooden shaft will feel the Serjeant's cane more kindly than 
your shoulders, if he finds you stooping on guard, like an 
old man mending a shoe. 

2nd Sentry 
You are wise and witty and pretty and smutty and full of 
good advice. 

[127] 



The Queen of China 



1st Sentry 
Look! there's a shadow coming through the doorway. 

2nd Sentry 

Stand where you are or I'll stick you! 

{The Two Travellers enter.) 

1st Sentry 
Not like that! Is that language for the king's guard? 
Halt where you stand, strangers, and give me an account 
of yourselves or you shall taste affliction. 

2nd Sentry 
Very noble! Very praiseworthy! Do but stick them in 
so formal a manner and they will die in the politest agony. 

1st Traveller 
We are known, good soldier, we are customed here: 
Let us but one step further in to find ' 
Good friends and many. 

2nd Sentry 

Not a step. You have such villainous brown faces as if 
you had been overbaked in hell, and such sharp long noses 
that you might have bored your way out of the oven there- 
with. And you have round eyes, not like ours. 

1st Traveller 

We are foreigners 
And yet not enemies. 

[128] 



The Queen of China 



2nd Traveller 

Stand off, young fool, 
Whom half a month of half-learnt drill hath taught 
To tyrannize and threaten with the pike, 
That trembles in your clumsy fingers. 

1st Traveller 
Still! 
Enough of quarrelling words. Good soldier, go 
And fetch the ancient Chamberlain, whom we knew. 
His warrant will suffice to stamp us friendly 
And worthy of admission. 

2nd Sentry 

I'll go. I know the Chamberlain and I'll stretch my legs 
looking for him. Hold them off, comrade, put your pike 
at their bellies and entertain them with pleasant words. I'll 
be a messenger. 

{He goes out.) 

1st Sentry 
Stay where you are, gentlemen, or in all kindliness I 
must prick you. I bear you no ill will, I am your most 
obedient servant, but if you move a step, I'll let your 
blood. 

2nd Traveller 
A courteous cut-throat! 

1st Traveller 

See, the Chamberlain 
Approaches, almost hasting! 

{The Chamberlain enters.) 
[129] 



The Queen of China 



Do you know us? 
Do our countenances in your memory hold 
Or hath not amity such preserving stuff 
To keep our pictures constant in your eyes? 

Chamberlain 
I know you not. ... I know you! Is it true? 
You are here again, old friends? 

1st Traveller 

After long leagues 
On camel-back across the bitter sands 
That are more salt than is the merciless sea 
And not so beautiful. 

Chamberlain 

But you are here, 
New washed and cleanly clothed, with happy faces. 
Among your ancient though your alien friends. 

2nd Traveller 

We have come to you again, I know not why. 

For surely there is joy in Lombardy; 

The clear white wine is made there and the women 

Are also clear and white and straight and tall 

And the grey olives grow upon the hills 

In sunshine no less generous than this. 

But we have ridden on horses, mules and camels 

And crossed wide seas in many dangerous ships 

To be with you again. 

[130] 



The Queen of China 



1st Traveller 

Is there no news? 
Or is the kingdom still as when we left it, 
Placid and sleepy and daily growing fat 
On the rich harvest of the river-mud? 
Have not the Tartars once come down like hail 
To rumple the silk skirts of your fair women 
And slay your wise men in their libraries? 

Chamberlain 
You have gone and come again as to your home 
After a day of absence. Still the river 
Leaves its deposit on the layered shore 
And there the corn and soft green rice-stalks grow 
Each year in greater plentv, maize and millet 
Choke up the fields and block the winding valleys 
In wealthiest abundance. Still the people 
Are placid, sleepy and have every day 
More than is time enough to sun themselves 
Outside the doorways of their li2;ht-built houses. 
All these things are the same. Go you about 
And look for what is changed in any street 
And you'll not find one house built or pulled dovm. 

2nd Traveller 
And the court? 

Chamberlain 

The court — ay, there a change might be, 
For peoples change not but a king grows old 
And alters love and chooses better friends 
To guide his counsel or delight his heart. 

[131] 



The Queen of China 



The old king dies and burns his life away 
Daily like a glowing ember in a draught: 
The keen air of youth's passionate ideas 
Blows through his aged brain and fans it up 
Into consuming fire. 

2nd Traveller 

He is lunatic? 
Is that what you would say? An old man mad? 
Perhaps he has a new wife in his bed 
And wastes his scanty breath in loving her. 

Chamberlain 
He has taken a new wife into his house 
And yet his hands have not unloosed her girdle, 
So much he holds her high in reverence. 

1st Traveller 
A new queen wears the crown, the king's a lover! 
And gone back fifty years in boyishness 
Sickly to glance upon a maiden's zone! 
On with your news; discourse! 

Chamberlain 

beauty long 
Has never lightened these dim walks and ways, 
But now she dwells among us as a queen 
And holds her court with us. 

1st Traveller 

The old king loves 
This newly planted slip of beauty, this 
Stranger imheard of by the men we knew? 

[132] 



The Queen of China 



Chamberlain 
He loves her and she lives alone 
In the pavilion yonder by the lake, 
And sleeps alone. 

2nd Traveller 
We come from countries where men honestly 
Lie if the need be but dress up no riddles 
That cloak the truth and leave its heart imchanged. 
Old chamberlain, your narrow, wrinkled eyes 
Perplex me. 

1st Traveller 
Peace! the manner of these strange men 
Is to conceal. We grow too old, we two, 
And too much versed in our wide travelling 
To cry this land up and that land down. 
All peoples are bright butterflies to me. 
Rejoicing me in variance. As well desire 
That all the birds of the earth should sing one song 
As that all men should show one face to us. 

Chamberlain 

Yet have I spoken truth. The king's new wife 
Is virgin still. 

2nd Traveller 
And you called her beauty's self? 
Or is she some princess from lower China, 
As stiff and ugly as the treaty-seal 
Whose part she plays? 

[133] 



The Queen of China 



Chamberlain 

She is most beautiful. 
And therefore the king mounts not her chaste bed, 
Because he dares not till she beckon him. 

1st Traveller 
Is he become a dotard, straitly bound 
By an imaginary chain? sorrow! 
That the great wise old king should stoop to beg 
A woman's kisses in senility. 

Chamberlain 
She is a slave. 

Her father's name and house alike unknown. 
Her limbs and life being subject to the law. 
To whipping, tearing, branding and the wheel 
If she should disobey. A distant Viceroy, 
Out of a city high among the mountains, 
Sent her, a chosen gift, to please the king. 
With fifty mounted men to be her guard. 
They rode around her sternly with drawn swords, 
She resting in their midst as easily 
As doth a slight flower in a fold of the rocks 
Where soil has gathered and birds dropped a seed. 

1st Traveller 
Did she, on seeing, make her lord a slave? 

Chamberlain 
She gave the king a letter and stood mute 
With folded hands before the dragon-throne 
And quiet lips and all submissive eyes. 

[134] 



The Queen of China 



But when he had read it and had gazed on her 

He drew her to his side and on his seat 

And bade her rule his courtiers, which she does 

With words and glances, drawing reverence 

From bearded barons and old generals. 

Even the ribald young men of the court 

For whom to jest is such occasion now 

Hush their light tongues and gravely speak of her 

With worship. 

2nd Traveller 

Do you speak to us of her, 
Catalogue all her beauties and declare 
Her virtues to us. 

Chamberlain 

It was recently 
You called me old, 

Spoke of my narrow and my wrinkled eyes, 
Too narrow, too wrinkled to let beauty in. 
And age has withered up my lively tongue 
That cannot now discourse of lovely things. 
There are younger men than I to speak of her. 
{A Young Courtier crosses the stage.) 

1st Traveller {approaching him). 
Be done with those soft dreams your eyes betray. 
Young lord, and tell me what thing is the queen? 



Courtier 
She is an arrow flown against the wind. 
(He passes out.) 
[135] 



The Queen of China 



2nd Traveller 
The one's too cold to speak and all the rest 
Too hot for reason. She's a woman doubtless 
Who in the crowd of dainty courtiers 
Will find a lover nearly to her choice 
And make the best of him. Till then she keeps 
The aged doddering king out of her bed 
And by a feigned mystery chains the court 
In worship of her. 

1st Traveller 

But the king was wise 
And in his veins the blood ran still and true 
When last we sojourned here. 

Chamberlain 

The king is wise 
But now his wisdom is a fierier sort; 
Not the tame learning of sedentary sages 
But a fierce active knowledge that destroys 
And feeds upon the instrument it uses. 
He rises early, goes about his day 
With such quick zest and uncontrolled desire 
That the inmost chambers of the sacred house 
Hear now a sound till this unknown to them, 
Rustling of royal silks in haste that pass. 

1st Traveller 
marvellous transformation! The old grave king 
Who ruled his happy kingdom soberly, 
Surrounded by the gravest mandarins, 

[136] 



The Queen of China 



That ever China knew! I am amazed. 
He will wear armour now and go to war, 
Waving his sword beneath the dragon-banner, 
And dream of conquest like an untaught boy. 



Chamberlain 

Deem not the king is grown again a child. 
He is most wise, I say, and all his passions 
Are governed by a fire beyond our sight. 

2nd Traveller 

Are you too fallen a slave to this strange girl? 

Behind the riddle of your changeless eyes 

I half see mysteries moving. We have known 

In our own land how courts are set aflame 

And princes maddened for a worthless woman 

And the old tales tell, which we hold for truth. 

How empires vaster than we now obey 

Hung in the fingers of an idle queen, 

Such power has beauty had in Italy. 

But here! You cluster round your river mud 

And tend the rice-crop, year on patient year, 

And the grave kings succeed eternally 

One to another in unbroken peace. 

What should you know of love and lust and war, 

Parricide, matricide, and fratricide. 

Fire, rapine and the sheathless thirsty sword 

And all the ills that women bring on princes? 

I will not yet believe it. 

[137] 



The Queen of China 



1st Traveller 

How stands the prince 
In this new turmoil of the wildered court, 
Who when we last were here was next the throne, 
His father's chosen son? 

Chamberlain 

He is grown grave. 
Even as the king has waxed in youthfulness, 
So he in gravity and the look of years. 
You were his friends before but you'll be fortuned 
If now he will exchange five words with you. 

2nd Traveller 
The court is surely mazed. 

1st Traveller 

Changed at the heart. 
And yet the land as we came through it here 
Slept on its old and well -remembered sleep. 
The light junks glided on the yellow stream. 
The country, right and left, an endless field 
Of greening crops in tranquil busyness 
Lay like a sleepy hive. Your working people 
Stood quietly to their labour. Yet, in our absence, 
Time has been busy and remorseless change 
Fretting away the features of our love 
And laying down strange shapes to meet our touch. 
Even here the halls and gardens are the same: 
I do remember that old climbing jasmin. 
Whose gnarled roots start stiffly from the ground 

[138] 



The Queen of China 



In writhen nakedness but higher up 

Burst in a boundless fountain of white flowers. 

Here in this garden once with care you taught me 

The secrets of your white-haired scientists, 

Compass and printing-press and dreadful dust, 

That being lit will blow great walls apart. 

Secrets I carried back to see despised 

In mine own native land, where yet they grow 

— And now one secret you withhold from me. 

2nd Traveller 
Who is this man that walks with blackened brow 
And frowning purpose? Is it the general 
That swept with purifying flame the hills 
Which were infect with rebels? 

Chamberlain 
It is he. 

2nd Traveller 

Ask, ask of him. 
{The General crosses the stage.) 

1st Traveller 
You were my friend when first I visited 
The court of China. 

[The General stands and stares at him.) 
Tell, tell me now 
Who is this queen, this mystery shrouded woman 
Who captivates the king and wraps up all 
In a close-meshed veil of sorcery? 

[139] 



The Queen of China 



Tell me, I pray you, for you are a man 
In the high summer of a human life, 
Ripe yet not buried in the mound of years, 
Master of life, experienced in death, 
Having led armies and commanded men. 

General 
She is a trumpet blowing to distant wars. 

1st Traveller 
You tell me nothing — or much. 

General 

No more — no more. 
{He passes out.) 

2nd Traveller 
Are they all mad? 

Chamberlain 

The court is breaking up 
And all are passing out. 

2nd Traveller 

Here comes the prince 
With chin reposing gravely on his breast 
And his still hands folded behind his back. 
I dare not speak to him. 

1st Traveller 

But I will speak 
Because this mystery presses on my heart. 

[140] 



The Queen of China 



He is yet young, he hath not thirty years: 
His icy posture is not natural 
Even in a young man of this strange land. 
Perhaps to see his ancient friends again 
Will melt his blood for any purposes. 
{The Prince enters.) 

2nd Traveller 
He is not the same as these are, for his face 
Is sorrowful. Here there's no mystery. 
I have not in this country seen a man 
Whose countenance was marked as this man's is, 
Showing what all they hide. 

1st Traveller 

Beloved lord! 
We are two travellers, come from the west, 
To visit China once again. 

Prince 

Be welcome! 
The chamberlain shall wait on you. 

1st Traveller 

You know us, 
If but your royal memory carries back 
A few years past. 

Prince 

I know you, yes, I know you. 

2nd Traveller 
Accept our duty, sir, and our true love, 

[141] 



The Queen of China 



The same love which of old we bore to you. 
Which you returned, we thought. 

Prince 

I do not change, 
Though a slight cause may make me moody now 
And scant of words. I know you well indeed; 
You are the brave Italians who came 
First of your race to visit China's court, 
With whom too I have held long conference. 
Learning the ways of many foreigners, 
As is most meet for princes so to do. 
Welcome again! You see I am uneasy 
But it is nothing. Cure my ills with words. 
Brave words and coloured, lit by distant suns 
And blown by many winds. You are welcome here 
And shall have what you will. Come you for trade? 

1st Traveller 
We come for knowledge, sir, and old affection. 
And all we ask of you is also words. 
News of the country and our friends herein. 

Prince 
Of whom count me the chief, at least in kindness. 
To serve you well, if not in your esteem. 
I am as you see me, strong in body and heart, 
In spirit unperturbed, as formerly 
You knew me. 

1st Traveller 

And the king, your father, sir? 

[142] 



The Queen of China 



Prince 
As well as I, with more of the look of youth 
Than I can claim to. He is busier, 
More anxious for the state, as years pass on, 
Leaving each year a dole of wisdom with him. 
He will rejoice to know his well-loved roof 
Shelters two ancient friends once more. He holds it 
Inalienably the duty of a king 
To comfort travellers and let them go 
Ready to come again. I'll send to him. 

2nd Traveller 
And the new queen? 

Prince 

What! you have heard of her? 
Yet she is not of the number of your friends. 

2nd Traveller 
Her fame has travelled through the country, sir, 
And all the bumpkins in the villages, 
When they speak of the wonders of the capital. 
Add: And the king has taken a new wife. 

Prince 
I cannot speak of her. She is as high 
Above my praise, as my thoughts of her are higher 
Than of ought else. She is a halcyon. 
Born to send sunny days on China. 

1st Traveller 

She 
Is beautiful? 

[143] 



The Queen of China 



Prince 

You tempt me on, good friend, 
But I am slow, knowing what's out of reach. 
And that's her picture to be made in words. 
Had I a poet's golden phrase at call 
And golden music in my voice, I could not 
Depict her in her loveliness, detail 
The curves of cheek and breast and arched foot. 
Explain the eyes' soft splendour. 

2nd Traveller 

In our land, 
Poets tell more than this and they set out 
How she spreads wide her arms to take her lover, 
And how her soft lips meet and answer his 
Dumbly. 

Prince 
I said no single word of love, 
But only that the queen's bright excellence 
Is far beyond my praise. she is lovely 
Even as a pearl new-taken from the sea: 
She moves in radiance through the wildered court 
And the gay silks that hide her sweetly flow 
About the rhythmic motion of her easy limbs. 
You know how we wake one morning here to find 
Outside our opened windows the cherry-tree 
Suddenly blooming. Our hearts are then amazed 
And falter with the consciousness of beauty. 

{He turns half away and is silent.) 

[144] 



The Queen of China 



1st Traveller {softly). 
She is so fair, my lord? 

Chamberlain [secretly). 

He wears away 
And perishes in contemplation 
Of the bright queen. woe, woe for China! 

2nd Traveller {secretly) . 
All is changed then, if these men lose their masks 
And in their narrow Oriental eyes 
Love and fear show so plainly. 

Prince 

When she speaks, 
Like the strange cadences of modal songs. 
Her words at once perplex and charm the ear. 

{He stops as if choked, and sways on his feet.) 

2nd Traveller 
Look to the prince! Quickly! The prince is falling! 

Chamberlain 
K with your foreign eyes you'd see the queen, 
She walks now in the garden to the lake; 
There you may see her, she in yellow silk. 
{The Travellers run to the corner of the scene to watch. 
The Prince falls heavily in a swoon.) 

Chamberlain {bending over him). 
I cannot wake him, but he is not dead. 
Send for a doctor quickly! 

[145] 



The Queen of China 



1st Traveller {turning back). 

Could you see her? 

2nd Traveller 
A moment. She's a wench that's well enough 
But yellow as these Chinese women are, 
Though not so much as they. She did not smile 
But seriously went upon her way, 
Holding a fan. What did you see in her? 

1st Traveller 
Nothing, for I am old and my weak eyes 
Peered watering down the avenue and ached 
And could not yet descry her. I grow old 
And can see nothing. 

Chamberlain 

Bring a doctor quickly! 
The prince lies yet unstirring in his swoon: 
I cannot wake him ! 

{As the Travellers run to him and bend over the Prince, 
the Curtain falls.) 



[146] 



SECOND ACT 



SECOND ACT 

The Queen's Pavilion in the gardens of the palace. The 
Queen is discovered before her mirror. 

Queen 
Shall I put almond-blossom in my hair 
Or flowers of jasmin? Shall I tie it up 
With yellow silk or white? Ah, petty fool, 
What strange and small perplexities are these 
And womanish! to please a senseless thing. 
An unexpressioned mirror, night by night. 
That nightly shows again my own poor praise 
And mocks me in reflexion. 

The almond blossoms best where God has sown it: 
Yonder beside the sleeping lake it stands, 
A bare tree misted over with faint flowers, 
And the wind gently taps a loose trail to and fro, 
Shaking the perfume free. 
How still the time is, yet the air's alive 
And all its separate particles aquiver 
Work madly on my senses and my veins 
Till my blood runs like the spilt quicksilver 
Upon the chemist's table, that not rests 
But smoothly courses on. darling flowers! 
Is it the springtime moving in my body, 
The soft and piercing air that breathes on me, 

[149] 



The Queen of China 



Is it the sight of young and tender grass, 

Creeping across the lawn, that wakes in me 

This sweet and poignant restlessness of will? 

The bright tints of the figured silks I wear, 

The soft-hued shadows lying in their folds. 

Where bird and beast and blossom, strangely worked 

In golden threads and silver, are confounded 

And lie together in a shining dusk. 

These fair and gracious things, these gorgeous toys, 

And the living emblems of the happy season 

Strike and afflict mine eyes with loveliness. 

Would that the day were done and darkness here! 

For I have watched through ten full hours of light, 

From the pale morning to this coloured time. 

And every minute stuffed with sights and sounds. 

Odours and shapes that stab the naked sense 

With too much beauty and too keen a joy; 

And still the long hours float upon their way, 

Large with contentment, rich with happiness, 

And in conclusion bring the night with them. 

Now the first shades are stealing on the earth 

And weariness upon my limbs and eyes: 

Already I can feel the darkness come 

With sweet relaxing smells and larger sounds, 

That are more gentle, and the gift of sleep. . . . 

{Two Slave-Girls enter.) 
What is your business here? I would be private. 

1st Slave-Girl 
Suff"er, shining mistress, that we braid 
With tender fingers your long lustrous hair 

[150] 



The Queen of China 



And knot it in a crown upon your head. 
We have been taught by many years and whips 
Our duty to a queen and where to place 
Deftly her jewels with experienced hands, 
How to arrange the falling folds of silk 
Upon her breast and how to tie her shoes 
And how to paint her eyebrows and her lips 
With carmine and dark bistre. 
We are long used in these things, we have learnt 
With tears and bruises and the steady flow 
Of our own warm blood running down our heels 
Under the strokes of the house-steward's lash 
To know our delicate business. Suffer then 
That we may wait on you and tend your beauty. 
That's worthy of skill so many tears have bought. 

Queen 

Ever at dusk two slave-girls wait on me 
With speeches thus entreating in their mouths. 
Whom still I send away. Is there no end 
To all this store of slaves within the house? 
Are not the last yet come? I have no need 
Of tiring-maids to deck me. Mine own hands 
Are feat enough to drape my falling silks, 
To braid my hair and knot it. 
Mine own eyes and my mirror do suffice 
To judge where lies the jewel meetliest 
And where a blossom. Tell the steward this: 
A slave-girl at my elbow wearies me, 
When most my heart desires to be alone. 

[151] 



The Queen of China 



2nd Slave-Girl 
Have pity on us, for we dare not, lady. 
What use are we except to tend a queen 
And what man keeps the useless in his home 
Save with extremity of evil use? 
If you reject us, we go back again 
To curses and the bare, stiff whipping-post, 
The anguished stripping off of our thin gowns, 
The cruel cord that's tied about our wrists 
And the whistling leather falling on our backs. 
Until our flesh vies with our smarting eyes 
And weeps red tears, as they weep free and clear, 
Both bitter salt. 

1st Slave-Girl 

mistress, be inclined. 
Most lovely lady, to look well on us. 
We will be mute when we shall wait on you 
And will no more disturb your lonely dreams 
Than the light porcelain upon your table 
Or the long pin that holds your heavy hair. 
We are but things that live to do you service 
And wait on beauty. 

Queen 

What advantage still 
Hope you in serving me? What liberty 
For idleness and wantonness and plays 
More full of freedom than your state allows? 

1st Slave-Girl 
Alas, but we are penned and prisoned now, 

[152] 



The Queen of China 



Who are so young that every day seems long 
And yet is cruel swift in robbing us 
Of precious years wherefrom a joy is due. 
We should have pity from you, who can tell 
How freely pity should be given to youth, 
Licence our lovers freely to entertain. 
Where now a sour, hard steward shuts us up, 
Bolts close our doors, watches our lattices 
For sheets let down or candles set as signs 
To guide our pleasure. 

Queen 

And 'tis thus you'd use me? 
Make me a lucky darkness, a fortunate corner 
To hide your paramours? 

1st Slave-Girl 

0, you would feel 
Compassion for our state, for you are young 
And know how greedily time eats the years 
Of unused youth. 

2nd Slave-Girl {secretly). 

Too hot, too hot! Be cold! 
You speak new words to her, she hath not loved. 

Queen 
You know this frenzy, then, which, poets tell. 
Perplexes men and women, inflames their blood 
To fevers and blushing and their sensible tongues 
To utter foolish oaths? I have not loved. 

[153] 



The Queen of China 



My wits are quiet, I am not distraught, 
I reason unperturbed, my cheeks are cool, 
I sleep all night in peace, I do not wake 
Murmuring a name with tears. 

1st Slave-Girl 

are you happy? 

Queen 
I have so smooth and delicate a life, 
I cannot tell. I live from day to day, 
So thrilling with a sweet and glad unease 
In expectation of tomorrow's gladness, 
That all my joy's part pain and want of rest. 

2nd Slave-Girl 
But your delight, lady, when it comes. 
Does it stop up your pulses, seal your eyes 
Against the passage of the light-winged hours 
And fill your heart so that you lose all sense 
Of earth and being and the weight of time? 
For this is love and to find this we love. 

Queen 
My heart beats faster sometimes but not knocks 
Against my side in hasty agony. 
Great heavy beats, prolonged and intervalled. 
As they say lovers' do. 

1st Slave-Girl 

But when our hearts 
Burst with a joy we cannot tell from pain. 
We know we love indeed. 

[154] 



The Queen of China 



Queen 

But what is this? 
To hold debate upon a metaphysic, 
A very nothing, smoke of smoke, begotten 
By empty heat out of vacuity. 
You have too much tricked me with your idle tales: 
This is enough, begone. Your flesh is free, 
No stripes shall mark it, no blood stain it more 
For my ingratitude. Go now in peace; 
Who whips you, he himself shall know the lash. 
As the king loves me. Be my word your shield. 

1st Slave-Girl 
Our skill is wasted; we are useless things. 

2nd Slave-Girl 
Wasted and worse than useless, for the queen 
Hath shown offence at us. 

1st Slave-Girl 
We have offended, we are miserable. 
Unfit to attend upon so bright a queen. 
And all our lore in beauty is quite lost. 
We will go hence and creep to hide in shame; 
We are worthy to be whipped and if the steward 
Dares not to flog us, we will whip each other 
And expiate with self-inflicted blows 
Our grave offences. 

Queen 

Peace, ye noisy children; 
The air is quiet, all the birds are hushed 

[155] 



The Queen of China 



And you alone make echo my light walls 
With false complaint and crying. 

1st Slave-Girl 

Look! look! 
The king is walking down the avenue 
Wrapped in deep converse with two ancient men. 
An almond-petal settles on his beard. . . . 

2nd Slave-Girl 

Let us be gone. His frowning wrinkled face 
That hath no kinship with our youthful cheeks 
Makes me afraid. What would his anger be 
If he should find us by the queen refused? 
Let us escape him. 

{The King enters). 

King 

Loud and loud and loud 
Swell the light voices down the avenue 
And greet me coming hither, as though I came 
Into a covert full of springtime birds. 

Queen 
Ah me ungrateful! I have sent again 
Your gifts away. 

King 

Will you be lonely still 
And still reject the emblems of a queen? 
Let it be as you wish. You shall be pleasured, 
If that all I can give be not to give. 
Get you hence, children. {The Slave-Girls go out.) 

[156] 



The Queen of China 



This is my hour of colloquy with you, 

Most sweet refreshment when the day is done. 

Queen 
I am your slave. 

King 

So still you say, 
Which is another I should deem humility 
Put on for mocking, but your heart is true. 
Happy am I to have so fair a slave, 
So wise a servant, whom another king 
Would not dare call his queen or come to her 
Save with gifts loaded, pain expecting eyes 
And heart bowed down for tyranny and stripes. 
This day is done. 

One of my last, for I draw on in age 
And there is nothing that is left of it, 
Save traces of the sun about the air, 
Unless you approve my deeds and give them savour 
With good words and sweet nodding of the head. 
Listen! The governor of the Mountain Province, 
Who spoiled a poor man's patch of hard-raised millet 
For private vengeance, is cast down and shamed. 
Today I judged him in the attentive court, 
Took all his honours from him, turned him off, 
Free and disgraced. 

Queen 

that was kingly done! 

King 
Now he shall earn his bread and know how evil 
It is to lose a treasure hardly earned. 

[157] 



The Queen of China 



Queen 

it is evil to be robbed of all, 

Stripped, beaten down. The poor must still be sad; 

They lose so much because they have so little 

And the thin meal, that would disgust our stomachs, 

Is doubly bitter set upon their tables, 

Seasoned with doubt and sauced with aching fear. 

Tell me, the harbour-master of the port, 

Who thieved from the poor fishermen half their catch, 

When they brought their salt vessels to his piers. 

How has he fared today? I much misliked 

The stout and prosperous seeming of his face 

Against the pinched and pitiful regard 

Of his accusers. He were guilty enough 

To have ruled so fatly over men so thin. 

King 

1 had a paper from the governor 
Which weightily set forth his services, 
How he has been a lion in our part 

To put down smugglers, how he gave the alarm. 
Five years gone, when the Indian fleet approached, 
Threatening the harbour. 

Queen 

And for this you spared him? 
(King nods.) 



Queen 
What services can outweigh his injustice? 
my dear lord, if he had asked a guerdon 

[158] 



The Queen of China 



For these his deeds and you had granted it, 

When he proceeded: Give me leave to pill 

And rob the king's poor subjects, you'd have answered 

What would you have said, my lord? it is shame 

That thus the poor can sweat and suffer still, 

Even when the ruler is so wise a man 

And my heart sickens when I think of all 

The scattered kingdoms of the unhappy earth 

Where cruel men and careless boys are crowned. 

King (after a moment's silence). 
You are just 

And in the heat and hurry of your youth, 
You follow still unswayed the difficult path 
That an old king's feet cannot keep for long 
Without your guidance. I will put him down. 
As you commanded me. I am ashamed. 
I will put him down; there shall be an end of him. 
Yet do not think that I to pleasure you 
Do justice on my subjects. You have shown me 
How glad a thing is justice and how glad 
A king's heart is in judging righteously. 
I would not that the good deeds of your hand 
Should be the like of any concubine's 
Boons begged at midnight in the shameful bed. 

Queen 
They will not say so, who have known your virtue. 
You have given me your riches and your love 
And I am happy in the much I have. 
It is enough for me and I will study 

[159] 



The Queen of China 



How to repay you with the scanty gifts 
That are my own indeed. I will not steal 
Any least shred of your benevolent deeds 
To deck my queenship with. 

King 

But all is yours 
And I am yours and you are grown my life, 
A new blood beating in my ancient pulse. 
For there are voices speaking in young blood, 
Which an old heart no longer hears. They tell 
Of truth and justice and brave work to do. 
I do remember when they were my own; 
It is long since. . . . 

{He stands musing.) 

I bring you here a gift. 
Strange and of value to the curious mind, 
Two travellers from the unimagined West, 
Who were my guests once and who loved me well, 
\tTiich love has brought them hither once again 
A perilous journey through the springless waste. 
They were my friends and they are very wise, 
They have large learning and a store of tales 
Fit to delight a queen. 

Queen 

It shall be joy 
Enough to welcome them if they have loved you. 

King (going to the door). 
They rest their bodies on a green soft bank 
And breathe in quietly the excellent air. 

[160] 



The Queen of China 



What peace and knowledge rest within their eyes! 
The calm sweet memory of a coloured life 
Shines in the stirless lids. they are happy. 
Who are not weary save with labour done 
And toil accomplished. So may I rest some day 
But the end approaches and the goal not yet. 
Come, friends. The queen invites you; you may come. 
{The Travellers enter.) 

1st Traveller 
The love and reverence we bore the king 
Is now not halved but doubled for your sake. 
Take then our love, lady, and our prayers 
That China still may prosper in your rule. 

2nd Traveller 
We are two travellers, whose way has been 
Cast in the deserts where no beauty is. 
Now a strange gladness falls upon our hearts 
Merely to see you. 

Queen 

You have loved my lord 
And I accept your love. Halve it or double, 
The whole shall go to him; I could not stay 
So good a gift from him. Rise, travellers, 
For I am hungry for the tales you know. 

1st Traveller 
0, we have come a long and weary way. 
Past all your fancy, lower than your dreams. 
Through many dangers but' most tedious 

[161] 



The Queen of China 



For you to hear of. Will a list set out 
Of all the deserts we have suffered in 
Take and rejoice your ears with entertainment, 
Gobi and Shamo and the salten waste 
Beyond Bokhara and the lonely marshes 
That lie beside the desolate Caspian? 
We went on weary feet, bestrode strange beasts, 
Were passengers in foul and evil ships 
And we are here. We stayed with many kings. 
Splendid or barbarous, smooth-tongued or rough; 
In hovels and in palaces alike 
We lay awake all night in sweating fear 
To feel the treacherous blade that severs throats 
Of innocent sleeping men and no word said. 
Once in Stamboul we saw a lady die, 
A lovely lady who had done no hurt, 
Trussed in a sacking like a market-beast 
And flung to drown, when dawn with splendour gilt 
The bitter choking waters of her death. 
Because she loved. And once in Samarcand, 
The fabled town, we saw a beggar throned. 
Who set the crown upon his greasy head 
And gave the law out in a villain's voice 
To silken lords, who stooped and kissed his foot, 
And in Thibeth we saw the monasteries, 
Where the Grand Lama rules his drowsy monks. 
Who waste the day with turning of a wheel. 
That serves instead of grace and gracious deeds. 
How ticklish and alive is memory! 
Stir but the brain and the pot boils and bubbles 
And steams out pictures of the endless road, 

[162] 



The Queen of China 



How here we went a day through lofty tops 
By tracks and mountain -paths that scare the sense 
And over smooth, unfriendly fields of ice 
And jutting shelves and cornices of snow 
That trembled as we trod, the while the wind 
Curling round graven buttresses of rock 
Played like an icy lightning in the air 
And froze our purposes; and how we came 
Heavily at the end of the afternoon 
Over long slopes of short and bitten grass 
On to the shoulder of a blowing hill 
And saw the dreaming country spread beneath 
Under the faint mist and the falling sun 
Wrapt in a magic peace. There we have stood 
And let our burdens drop and breathed again 
TTie wreathing sweetness of the valley air 
That rises warmly from frequented fields 
To cheer the naked hills. we have stood 
Silent and felt a singing in our hearts 
To see how patient, careful man has made 
A garden of his earth. 
Here we went sweating up a narrow, stony 
Root-cumbered lane between low-arching trees 
In crushing darkness that could not conceal 
The steepness of the wooded mountain-side 
And there we halted in a shallow glade. 
Whose marshy middle the blue gentian decked, 
And slept uneasily and woke at dawn 
With fever fretting softly at our bones. 
These are the ornaments of voyagers, 
This hand a camel crushed in Turkestan, 

[163] 



The Queen of China 



This limping heel a Tartar's arrow struck, 

This bended back with ague hath been doubled 

All a long night amid the Volga's reeds; 

But these mine eyes are bright for having seen 

Death and escape, murder and treachery 

And sunrise in the mists of the high hills. 

in the wide waste world there's much to see 
For those who'll buy with danger! 
Wonders lie thick as in a raree-show 

And the showman is old Death. But we have seen, 

Between the wide and the shuttered gates of day 

And in the long, slow hours of perilous night, 

Twixt Tuscany where too the cherry blows 

And your bright country, no town made for rest. 

No vale that tempted us to lie in it, 

Though dusty were our heads and torn our feet 

With the long journey. 

King 

So his epic's done 
But briefly, though the end of it be good. 

Queen 
Old travellers, you are most fortunate, 
You have purchased wonders wisely. . . . 

1 would see other lands and learn how there 
The spring arises, how the blossoms grow 
Mantling in beauty round the standing trees, 
And burn away at last at summer's touch. 
Leaving the naked fruit behind. I'd learn 

If all men there are happy, ploughing, sowing 

[164] 



The Queen of China 



Or working stoopt among the golden ears 
Or taking the sweet apples from the boughs 
And laying them by rows in country lofts 
Or striding through the keen winds of the sea. 
I have a great wish to go far today: 
My body moves and turns within my silks, 
Restlessness and I know not what of fear 
Devour me. 

King 

The sap mounting in the trees 
Draws your blood with it, for your blood's like sap, 
That goes to feed the topmost flowering bough. 

Queen 
There is something in me stirring like the sap, 
A new sharp ache, a pain I would not lose. 
if I were a man, I'd take a horse 
And ride all night with stars to be my guide 
And echo for a groom to follow after. 
I'd ride all night until the mountains stood 
Patient beneath the flying hooves, and on. 
Along the causeway through the low, rich lands. 
High built and sure, beneath a young May moon 
Hung in the heavens, like a new-born moth, 
That only now unfolds her velvet wings, 
And ride still on and reach the palace gates. 
Weary and sated and prepared for rest, 
When peasants go out yawning to their fields. 
What is this racing madly in my veins? 
My eyes hurt me, my breasts hurt me and my hands 
For thought of all the loveliness I see. 

[165] 



The Queen of China 



1st Traveller 
It is the spring, dear queen. 

2nd Traveller {unheard). 

Perhaps — the spring ! 

Queen 

Call me my groom, my lord, and bid him saddle 
My too long stabled horse. Ah, he and I 
Alike have suffered in captivity 
Where generous spirits turn to acid sour. 
Will you call him, my lord, will you allow me 
To ride abroad — tonight — unguarded? 

King 
Ah! 
What would you? But I will not stay your wish 
Nor linger in fulfilment. 

Queen 

Take no heed: 
I am foolish and the empty breath of folly 
Fades in intent as mist on winter days 
Blown from the mouth. 

King 

What would you? 

Queen 

Nothing now, 
Save to be rested, to lose count of time 
And have in peace dominion of my senses. 

[166] 



The Queen of China 



King 
The young have growing pains, which we forget, 
But which we'd feel again were't possible. 

{The Chamberlain enters and throws himself at the 
King's feet.) 

Chamberlain 

Supreme Magnificence of Highest Heaven! 
Your son — 

Queen 

The prince — 

King 

My son? 

Chamberlain 

My lord, he lies 
These eight hours in a still and deathly swoon, 
Breathing, not sentient. All the doctor's art 
Avails not on his body and he lies 
Under the yellow hangings of his bed 
With pinched and bloodless face. His creeping pulse 
So dimly moves, with such faint finger marks 
The passage of his life that scarce the blood 
Runs through his slackened limbs. Three doctors watch 

him, 
Equally bowed with science and many years. 
Who can do nothing. Still the swoon goes on. 

Queen 
0! 

2nd Traveller {unheard). 

Mark the queen! 

[167] 



The Queen of China 



King 

He is my best-loved son, 
And losing him — 

1st Traveller 

My lord, we saw him fall 
And guessed not that his sickness was so heavy 
We were even speaking with him. 

Queen 

Go to him 
Quickly and take these learned men to him. 
surely in the desert you have found 
Strange herbs and charms our books are ignorant of 
And such may save him. 

1st Traveller 

All the skill we have, 
All drugs that now do fill our satchels, shall 
With our good will attend on his disease 
And we'll contrive his health. 

Queen 

Then go, my lord, 
For in such swoons the soul irresolute stands 
In the mouth and nostrils, in the doors and portals 
Of the warm comfortable body, loth 
To leave her fashioned home yet pressed to go, 
But will not if the right cure be but found. 
Go to him quickly. 

{The Curtain falls.) 
[168] 



THIRD ACT 



THIRD ACT 

Scene One 
The Prince's chamber with dimly burning, lamps. The 
Prince lies motionless in a bed which is hung with yellow. 
Three Old Doctors stand watching him. 

1st Doctor 

In my last medicine, in my final charm, 
There was no succour. All my essences 
A thousand times distilled by cunning slaves 
And filtered and refined till every drop 
Burns and is bright with the residing power, 
All these administered have no eflfect 
Upon his magic and unnatural sleep. 

2nd Doctor 
Still the pulse changes not. 

3rd Doctor 

When you can feel it, 
It beats at the same slow unveering rate, 
Such speed as scarce will keep a snake alive. 
The slowest breathing of all blooded things. 

2nd Doctor 
Should we try toads' lungs boiled with cinnamon 
And made into a plaster for the breast? 

[171] 



The Queen of China 



When I was young and daily sought the schools, 
Quick rumour said a mighty doctor there, 
One of my masters, saved a child with it, 
Who lay a week in such a swoon as this, 
Though he denied it. 

3rd Doctor 

Ah, my amulet! 
It should have saved him, if I had it now. 
It came to me from old Confucius' time 
And drove the strongest evils from their seat. 
A patient stole it. 

1st Doctor 

See him lying there! 
Sweet sirops and the sticky juice of fruits. 
Fine juice of herbs and the medicinal earths. 
Gum arabick compounded with pomegranates. 
And sifted dust of powdered chrysoprase. 
All I have used and still the trance unshaken 
Laughs at my sweating pains. 

3rd Doctor 

It is a devil. 
Which with burnt paper and with holy words 
We must expel from him. 

2nd Doctor 

It is a worm. 
Which lodges in a passage of the brain 
And there impedes its working. 

[172] 



The Queen of China 



1st Doctor 

None of these: 
If it had been disease or worm or devil, 
It should have yielded up to me ere this. 
It is no sickness I was taught to meet, 
My masters knew not of it. 

3rd Doctor 

Nor mine either. 

2nd Doctor 
God grant it may not be the plague again 
Come in another shape and deadlier 
As it is wont to do. 

1st Doctor 

The plague! 

3rd Doctor 

The plague! 

1st Doctor 
Put not this shape of evil in our eyes 
Which now must float between the light and us 
And haunt us. If this thing be true indeed, 
We three are doomed to die a dreadful death, 
With swelling in our loins and sweating blood 
And swollen tongues that stop the dying speech. 
When I was young, long ere you two were born, 
I saw the plague come down on us. It rose 
Out of the northward desert, where no man is 

[173] 



The Queen of China 



And smote our borders. Then the people lay 
Groaning in heaps beside their stinking houses; 
For when a woman perished in a house 
Her husband would not come to bury her 
But stayed upon the threshold and there died. 
Sons brought not water to their sinking fathers; 
In the ungarnished house of government 
Rotted unhelped the tainted mandarins. 
All, all! it seemed — my father and my mother! 
And there, a child, I straitly vowed my life 
To healing and the tending of men's bodies; 
All labour spent in vain, for now a cause 
Arises needing my most delicate skill 
And finds me wanting. I am ashamed! 

2nd Doctor 

No man continues long in this ill posture; 
If the prince wake not now, he dies. 

3rd Doctor 
And we? 

1st Doctor 
I fear the old king in his grief. 

2nd Doctor 
And I 
Fear for the king. Have you not noticed him, 
How he is changed, how all his looks and customs 
Are dangerously altered from their wont? 
I have distinguished in him many signs 

[174] 



The Queen of China 



Of ominous reading. In his age he lives 

As though his body were grown young again 

And his dry veins were flushed with youthful blood 

To wash out the old channels, long disused, 

Of vehemence and royal energy. 

Our honoured scientists have set it down. 

Living a long time closeted with books. 

In solitude to water budding thought, 

How these things token dangerous maladies 

And slow diseases that assail the brain. 

He grows as mad as those that waste in prison, 

Tearing the straw behind the pitiless bars, 

And did no sceptre nor no royal robes 

Assure him from their fate, he'd lie with them. 

1st Doctor 

The queen has touched the springs of youth in him, 
Renewed his wasting sinews, made more supple 
His hardening arteries 

And breathed a new and an amazing strength 
Into his nostrils and his panting lungs. 

2nd Doctor 
She is a woman visibly unsound, 
Whose passion for defending of the weak 
And febrile love of colours and bright flowers 
Proclaim her tainted and degenerate. 
The prince himself, who lies there hardly breathing. 
Is plainly epileptic, and his case. 
Though past the bounds of any practical skill, 
Is not beyond the grasp of theory. 

[175] 



The Queen of China 



We doctors know by reading of much print 
What flaws and faults to find in royal houses. 

3rd Doctor 
Softly! The king comes and a train with him. 

2nd Doctor 
Stand round the prince and take his pulse again. 
(The Doctors go to the bedside and the 1st Doctor takes 

the Prince's wrist. The King enters, followed by the 

Travellers and the Chamberlain.) 

1st Doctor (solemnly). 
His blood goes slowly as a hill-fed river 
In deepest winter when no snow doth melt. 

King 
Put up your drugs, put up your instruments, 
men of little worth! Is it for this 
The state has taught you and has nourished you 
So many years till your long beards are grey? 

1st Doctor (bowing). 
Slay us, mighty monarch, but delay 
Our death a little, for these foreigners 
Will surely heal the prince and we'd observe 
The unsuspected cure. Why, it is true 
That we are men of base and little worth; 
But grant us this, the last request we make, 
For we are famished even now for knowledge. 
Grant it, great lord; we would learn one thing more 
Before we die. 

[176] 



The Queen of China 



2nd Doctor (bowing). 

There is no end to learning 
And even in the doorway of the grave, 
A man may turn his head to read one line 
Before departing. 

3rd Doctor (bowing). 

Let us not go down 
To ignorant death and lie unlearned corpses. 
For surely still our curious ghosts would walk, 
With pens and tablets in their shadowy hands. 
To learn this one thing more. 

King 

Be silent, men 
Of vanity and flatulent, swollen science. 
Who but to hear is to abhor. Begone! 

2nd Doctor (secretly). 
Thank God for it. 

1st Doctor 

We will depart, my lord. 
(The three Doctors boiv deeply and go out.) 

King 

Go to him, friends. My only hope's in you. 

1st Traveller 
I have looked at him, tested his pulse and heart. 
Lifted his lids and looked upon his eyes. 
And hearkened his scant breath but there's no salve 

[177] 



The Queen of China 



That ever I have heard of would revive him. 
This is a sickness that is strange to me 
And I've seen many men die many deaths, 
Scurvy and leprosy and the damp ague 
That breaks the bones with its strong shivering. 
But this is none of these. 

King 

He is alive, 
They tell me, though his sleep resembles death. 
Is there no man can help him and help me? 
The new-born power, so gracious in my hands, 
Runs through my fingers now like falling water 
And I am helpless. Why, a king can kill 
With any sort of death, but when he stands 
At the sad bedside of his dying son. 
He is as powerless as another man. 

Chamberlain 

woe, woe, woe on China! Now is all 
The fabric of the high-arched kingdom gone 
And the fair provinces, the Mountain Province, 
The Province of the Plain, the River Province, 
The Border Countries and the teeming port 
And cities where the wise old Viceroys rule, 
Shaking their honoured governmental heads, 
All these are wounded. he is a prince 
That is a paragon of youthful virtues 
And is fulfilled of unexampled good! 

[178] 



The Queen of China 



King 
Had I not kingly state and governance, 
I'd rave as he does. 

Chamberlain 

Is there nought indeed? 
Can you not save him? 

1st Traveller 

He's in the hands of God. 
And hangs suspended by a viewless chain 
High out of our perception. 

Chamberlain 

I've a plan, 
If but the king will hear me. 

King 

Speak, old servant. 

Chamberlain 
With these poor doctors we've not used up yet 
The treasures of the wisdom of the realm. 
In a corner of the royal library. 
Hidden by books heaped like a monument. 
Sits an old sage, old beyond reckoning. 
To whom I am a child. He studies there 
And studied there when you and I were young, 
Distilling all the toil of his long life. 
All honey gathered from his dusty flowers, 
To make one page in the great dictionary. 

[179] 



The Queen of China 



Who knows what he has found in such a time, 
Strange remedies in unaccustomed script 
And charms by us forgotten? 

King 

Seek him out: 
This is a spider's thread of slender hope 
And yet no worse than nothing. Seek him out. 



I go, majesty. 



Chamberlain 



{He goes out.) 



1st Traveller 

Take courage, sir; 
Still the prince lives. 

King 

He lives still, yes, I know, 
And set some hope thereon. But is it life, 
In which the blood forgets its usual custom 
And slides as slowly as a glacier, 
Which once ran rapid as a hill-side stream? 
His veins are new and fresh, he is a youth. 
Whose body is a playground for the blood 
To rim and leap in. Were it in my veins 
That this sad stoppage held its dreadful sway, 
I could not marvel but I marvel now 
And weeping in wondering. 

1st Traveller 

we weep with you, 
Tears of suspense, my lord, but not of loss, 

[180] 



The Queen of China 



For nothing is yet lost while he's alive. 
And this old sage, whose coming we attend, 
May have recovered something from the waste 
Of hungry years. 

As we have found bright gold in desert sands. 
And if he aid not, there is nature yet, 
Always our last hope in tlie deepest ills. 

King 
Here in my land we put no trust in her. 
Save when our learned men have wrestled with her 
And got good gifts by force. 

2nd Traveller 

The Chamberlain 
Comes hasting back and brings with him a man, 
As old as China. 
{The Chamberlain comes in, followed by an Old Scholar.) 

Chamberlain {to the King). 

Pardon, lord; his wisdom 
Hath clogged his brain and made him mannerless. 
Be merciful to his old rusted wits. 
Whereon the dust of many books hath settled, 
And hear him out in patience. 

King 

Let him speak. 

Old Scholar 
I knew your grandfather and you are like him 
But he was taller and less pouched at the eyes 

[181] 



The Queen of China 



And had a nobler carriage of the head. 
Where is he now? 

King 

He is a long time dead 
My father too is dead and I am king. 

Old Scholar 

What! dead so young? it is pity, pity! 
And boys must rule the state with their rash hearts 
And hands by age unpractised. We, the old, 
Love not this quick and youthful governance, 
Knowing how years bring wisdom. 

Chamberlain 

There's the Prince, 
Lying there ghastly on the yellow bed. 
See to him quickly, if speed be in your limbs. 
And use what wisdom the long years have given. 
{The Old Scholar goes to the Prince and examines him, 
while a deep silence fills the room.) 

Old Scholar 
He is well and strong but in a powerful trance 
And so may live while all of us decay. 
Your grandson's grandsons may discover him, 
When we are all forgotten, sleeping still, 
Unchanged and uncorrupted. 

King 

Thus to live! 
Must China then be ruled by a sleeping king? 

[182] 



The Queen of China 



Better that he should die, for while he lives 
No other of my sons may mount the throne. 
I swore it in the temple five years gone. 
Feasting my birthday with the Ancestors; 
They heard and noted down my pious vow, 
Nodding their wise and ghostly heads for sanction. 
That was the oath I swore. May I . . . should I . 
Take in my hands the crime and on my head 
The guilt — the guilt — the guilt — 

Old Scholar 

Be quiet, man. 
You dam the flow of wisdom and bar up 
With your intemperate, youthful vehemence. 
My loaded words. This illness came on him 
By human causing. Neither drug nor blow 
Assailed the prince nor any dark disease. 
He is wounded, though ye see no welling blood 
Nor any open gash. The wound lies deep 
Upon the delicate fabric of the soul 
And stops his being up. But there's a cure: 
Search out the spirit that thus has wrought on his. 
The soul alone which did this can undo. 

King 
But who's the man? Who'd wish to harm my son 
Or hurt him with a spell, a sword-blade forged 
Of whispered words and dark imaginings? 
He is not hated; even in his sickness, 
His words were courteous and his looks were kind. 
Who is the murderer? 

[183] 



The Queen of China 



Old Scholar 

No murder this! 
Full well I know how mind can shatter mind 
With airy weight and blows. You walk your ways, 
Slaying in blindest ignorance with a thought 
And maiming with desires. foolish men! 
Who are most like to children armed with daggers 
Or playing with huge poisons. Learn of my wisdom, 
Poor wisdom! that still makes a crutch for fools 
And may not walk alone. I bid you now 
Seek out the prince's servants and his friends, 
All that are daily round him, all that touch 
His life materially with passing hands 
Or with the frailest woven web of thought. 
Then let them walk beside him as he lies 
And touch him, each one gently on the brow; 
The right man's touch will call him back to life. 
Let what I bid be done. Farewell! 

{He goes out.) 



Chamberlain 

He is gone! 

King 
Let what he bids be done. It is a chance 
Built up too high and slender in the fancy 
To bear the weight of any useful hope. 
Yet we will try it. 



1st Traveller 

Call the prince's servants! 
[184] 



The Queen of China 



Stay! 



King 

Chamberlain 

Ah, my lord — 

King 

I faint, my will gives way, 
I cannot see it. put off the test. 
Hope grows, a wretched seedling in my heart, 
With pale and sapless leaves and drooping stem; 
Let me a moment nourish it. Let me — 

2nd Traveller 
Hold him, he shakes — 

1st Traveller 

Your hand behind his shoulders. 
So! — 

King 
I am better. Look not thus with fear 
On age's and on grief's infirmity. 
Give me a moment. I can breathe again. 
0, how it caught my heart. 

1st Traveller 

We'll lead you hence 
Into your own apartments and with you 
Await the outcome of the trial. 

[185] 



The Queen of China 



King 
No! 
I will not go so far, I'll stay with him 
And sooner learn if there be any hope. 

2nd Traveller 
Wait till the morning's light. 

King 

I could not sleep 
And could not watch all night and nothing done. 
Give me a moment. I am better now. 
The thing shall now be done. 

Chamberlain 

We'll draw the curtain 
That shuts the alcove off. You shall not see 
The long procession going by and by 
Or watch with sick hope and o'erstrained heart 
Each hand raised up to touch him. 

{He draws a curtain hiding the bed.) 
I will go 
And set the train in motion. As the first 
Go by his bed, I'll marshal up the rest 
And send swift messengers about the city 
To fetch his noble friends. 

{He goes out.) 

2nd Traveller 

We'll not despair. 
While anything is doing. Sit, my lord; 
Shall we with coloured travellers' tales beguile you? 

[186] 



The Queen of China 



King 
Today I have been happy as a youth 
For all the toils of kingship had grown light 
And turned to toys which I manipulated 
With easy fingers. Now here is a woe 
Beyond the great new wisdom I have learnt. 
It passes me: I am too old a man. 

1st Traveller 
But not so old as I nor yet so worn 
With dangers. 

King 

Surely that step was the first! 
There goes another and another now. 

{The Chamberlain comes in.) 

Chamberlain 
I have set the court in motion now and all 
Pass in an anxious stream beside the bed 
For any commoner may have the touch 
Of curing sickness, formerly reserved 
For kings alone. 

King 

Stay with us now, old friend. 
I need all my old friends now. 

1st Traveller 

We are here. 



King 
ril not forget it. 

[187] 



The Queen of China 



Chamberlain {after a pause). 

Still the train goes on, 
Guards, waiting-maids, the servants of the bath. 
Gardeners, grooms and all the varletry 
That fills the court. 

1st Traveller 

But still as it goes on 
Hope lingers. Till the last poor slave has been 
We'll not despair of him. 

2nd Traveller 

Still they go on 
And still I hear the sound of those to come. 

{The Curtain falls.) 



Scene Two 

The same, not long before the dawn, with the curtain still 
hiding the Prince's bed. The King, the two Travellers and 
the Chamberlain sit round a small brazier, in which charcoal 
is burning. 

2nd Traveller 

How all night long my flesh has crawled to hear 

The shuffling and the laughter going by, 

The steady tramp of the insensate feet 

Of the poor slaves, who came to try their touch 

And in mechanical procession tread 

Our last and fading hopes to dust. 

How they have laughed and nudged and clasped at hands 

[188] 



The Queen of China 



And pulled at garments and gone breathless by, 
The idiots, to whom anything that's strange 
Makes an occasion for a holiday. 
What cookmaid was it that went by just now. 
With greasy clothes and breath of very kitchen 
And harsh loud piercing whisper, out of sight? 
Was she the last to go? 

1st Traveller 

The last has gone 
Two hours back in the dead and depth of night. 

2nd Traveller 
Two hours gone! but a sound — just here — just now 
Under my head, in the very gate of my ear, 
That hath stood strained all night — 
The last wave of that hideous flowing tide 
That beat in loud succession on the shore. 
What was the sound, friend, tell me — 

1st Traveller 

You have slept 
More than two hours and we have watched alone. 
The Chamberlain and I, in misery. 
Warming our hands above this charcoal fire. 
Stretching our palms out to the flameless glow, 
Of use and custom, not for comfort's sake. 
Awake and share our vigil; we have dreamt 
The long night through with still unclosing eyes. 
While the dark skies encompassed us around 
With walls of blackness that closed in on us 

[189] 



The Queen of China 



And choked our breath. We dreamt in solitude 
Of endless evil striking like a sword 
Upon the land of fertile happiness. 
Of sickness eating like a minute worm, 
The fruit's sweet centre. 

2nd Traveller 

Is the king asleep? 

Chamberlain 
His eyes are closed, his head has fallen back. 
His hands rest still upon the chair's curved arms, 
His body lies relaxed — he is asleep. 

1st Traveller 
Hush, hush! He does not sleep, but his great age 
Makes nature kindly to his brain. He lies 
Wrapt in a stupor of the o'erwrought soul, 
Wliich now is drugged from pain by pain itself. 
Thus sorrow floods out sorrow and the evil 
Defeats its own damned armies. 

King 

It is gone, 
That weary caravan of dwindling hope. 

1st Traveller 
The night is not yet gone and you are weary. 
Lay back your head upon the pillow there 
And sleep awhile. 

[190] 



The Queen of China 



King 

0, I am fain of sleep. 
{He lies back again and sleeps.) 

2nd Traveller 
What's to be done now? 

1st Traveller 

Let the dead king sleep, 
Beside his son that is alive in death, 
For there is nothing left. All stratagems. 
Devices and procurings of the wise 
Are shown as empty and as useless things, 
As dances of the desert dervish-doctors, 
Who mock the sick with leaps and attitudes, 
Which we have mocked at. There is nothing left. 
Save to expect the coming of the day 
And ruin with it. 

Chamberlain 

Still the day comes on; 
The fountain now stands out all silvery clear. 
That through the sad hours beat upon my brain 
With dull recurrence of its falling drops. 

2nd Traveller 

Did you not say the land slept on unchanged? 

[191] 



The Queen of China 



Chamberlain 
All was the same — and still the country sleeps 
In comfort unawakened till this day, 
Which I prevent not, which I will not flee. 
Which shall enwrap us with its dawning fear, 
As we sit still and wait on its approach. 
But what shall be thereafter well I know 
And what the evils falling on the state. 
In a few years this country shall decay, 
Our joyous houses and our porcelain towers 
Shall be thrown down and all the garden-walks 
Be choked with darnel and the hungry thistle 
And barren weeds that turn the land to waste. 
The enemy shall cast us down and rise 
In hideous triumph on our fallen bodies: 
The capital shall be deserted, yea. 

The planks of the thronged wharves shall warp and start, 
Strange river-snails crawl over them, the worms 
That in the river's bottom have their home 
Shall eat with puny teeth the seasoned baulks 
And bring the whole to ruin. The canals, 
Placid and level, only now disturbed 
By passage of our wealthy merchandise. 
Shall be stopped up with growth of water-weed 
And spread their sluggish floods among the crops. 
The royal roads shall pit and rut and break 
With softening rain and the disrupting frost. 
Yea, even the goldfish in the garden-court 
Shall weep this day. 

For when our city's fired, there bowl will crack 
And leave them to be choked in bitter air. 

[192] 



The Queen of China 



2nd Traveller 
Must all the people slumber with the prince 
Nor wake at any call to know these wrongs? 

Chamberlain 
You know not how we are ringed with enemies. 

1st Traveller 
Soften your voices. Leave the king to sleep, 
Till the full sun is risen on the earth. 
There is miraculous healing in the light 
For broken spirits, there's no cordial 
For grief that can be likened to the sun. 
No cloak beneath which sorrow festers more 
Than darkness and there is no poison known, 
That worse can rankle in the spiritual wound. 
Than this grey merciless light of early dawn. 

Chamberlain 
The king sleeps well. Would that I too could sleep 
And find forgetfulness of misery. 

2nd Traveller 
But he is sicker than his helpless son. 
See how the bright eyes through the wearing lid 
Shine out with fever, how his wasting hands 
Grow thinner, whiter. He is close to death. 
fetch the doctors for him! 

Chamberlain 

They have fled, 
Fearing his wrath most foolishly. 

[193] 



The Queen of China 



2nd Traveller 
Alas! 
For the wise men whose wisdom fails them now. 
How are we better? 

1st Traveller 

Soft! the king awakes! 

King 
I have slept long and still mine eyes are heavy; 
You should have waked me, I have slept too long. 

1st Traveller 
You have slept ten minutes, sire. Lie down again 
For you are weary and in need of rest 
And we will wake you at a better time. 

King 
I have slept too long already. Now I know 
Why I am weary. Is the last one gone? 

Chamberlain 
The last has gone and left no hope behind. 

King 
And my son sleeps yet? Has not once he stirred? 

1st Traveller 
His breathing has not altered through the night, 
Not even in the dim and dreadful hour, 
When the waking are most sad and the sick oft die. 

[194] 



The Queen of China 



King 
Send for that ancient man again. I'll ask him 
If he has used up all his armoury 
Of quaint extravagant devices now. 
Strange that we do expect beneath the veil 
Of rustic mannerlessness in learned men 
A more than common wisdom. 

1st Traveller 

Let him sleep, sire, 
And you too sleep. There is no profit now 
In waking. 

King 

I will see him, I will ask him 
What he can do — whether he — Send for him ! 

2nd Traveller 
Let it all rest, my lord, I do implore you, 
Till there's warm light to see by. 

King {as if dazed or in a dream). 
Send for him! 
I am told to ask you for him. 

(The 1st Traveller makes a sign that the King is to be 
obeyed. ) 

Chamberlain 

I will bring him. 
He rises early and is with his books 
By the first light. I'll bring him to you soon. 
{He goes out.) 
[195] 



The Queen of China 



1st Traveller 
Give me your hands, sir. They are cold and I 
Will warm them twixt my palms. 

King 

I am all cold 
And neither sunshine nor the bright coal-fire 
Nor human blood can warm my limbs again, 
For the chill spreads outward, moving from the heart. 
{The Chamberlain comes in, followed by the Old Scholar.) 

King (listlessly). 
Are you so old that you have done with sleep, 
To be thus early playing with your books? 

Old Scholar 
Why have you sent for me? 

King 

You have cured my son, 
Have you not cured him? Go and look at him. 
How the sweet sleep of health doth wrap him up 
And soothe his body. 

1st Traveller (secretly). 

This is too much pain 
And we are tightened even to cracking point. 
(Aloud.) Observe your patient, old and learned doctor, 
On whom your fine device has fallen as light 
As snow on water. Stay among your pens! 
You have held us all a night with foolish hopes 
And cloaked our brains in fancy till the dawn 

[196] 



The Queen of China 



With cold and pitiless finger pointed at us 
For fools in the light's eyes and in our own. 

Old Scholar 
Is the Prince dead? 

1st Traveller 

He sleeps and sleeps and sleeps 
Untouched by your contrivings. 

Old Scholar 

This is strange! 
I am amazed. My science is not vain: 
I have not duped myself with lying arts 
And transient, to gather empty praise. 

King 
The King dismisses you; stay here no longer. 
I might have racked you but I have no will 
To add to the world's sum of pain. 

Old Scholar 
Softly, my friend; I am no charlatan. 
Have you observed with order what I bade you? 
Have all passed by him and laid hands on him? 

Chamberlain 
All have gone by and played the sorry part. 
The slaves infect the chamber with their breath 
Of kitchens hot and the rank stable-smells 
To no avail. 

[197] 



The Queen of China 



Old Scholar 

Have all his friends gone by? 

1st Traveller 
Even we, we four, when waiting grew too long, 
To break the night, made spaces in the file 
And touched his head ourselves and left him sleeping. 

Old Scholar 
Have all the women passed? 

2nd Traveller {sharply hut secretly). 
Unlucky word! 

1st Traveller 
The youngest slave that crouches at the spit 
Has touched the Prince. 

Old Scholar 

Has the Queen been here? 
{There is a dead silence.) 

King 
Who speaks of the Queen? 

Chamberlain 

He said, sire — 

King 

What, the Queen? 
Last farcical and pitiful invention 
To play his mummery out with. Idle sir, 

[198] 



The Queen of China 



Will you pursue your drollery to the end? 
Have you no drug, no novel incantation 
To play a change with? 

Old Scholar 

I have said my word. 

2nd Traveller 
Dismiss this fool, sire. 

King 

Shall we play it out? 
There's all the morning to be travelled through 
And nought to do in it. We'll fetch the Queen 
If this impostor will be satisfied. 
She lies in the pavilion by the lake 
And does not rise until the day's more up. 
(He goes to the window.) 

2nd Traveller (to the Chamberlain). 
You guessed! You too! 

Chamberlain (to the 2nd Traveller). 

I would not think of it, 
But now it's on us. 

2nd Traveller 

What shall we do now? 

Chamberlain 
Blow blindly on like gnats before a storm. 
There's nothing else. 

[199] 



The Queen of China 



King 

See, still the light is yellow in her windows, 

A sallow radiance against the dawn. 

That tells of guttering candles. Go to her. 

[The Chamberlain bows and goes out.) 

2nd Traveller {secretly) . 

Old man, you cannot guess what you have said! 
Unsay your foolish word and bring him back, 
Else equally our happiness is lost 
And China ruined. 0, a hate begun 
Between a king and his succeeding heir 
Hath more of evil in it than the plague 
That feeds on life. 

Old Scholar 

My science is not vain, 
As you have vainly said. Let hate begin 
And wreck the land and pull the people down! 
I have seen five kings on whom the kingdom hung 
By a parting thread and still we live in peace. 
What is your kingdom? what your government? 
I see you from my height of ancient knowledge 
Like ants acrawl, as busy and as vain. 
Men without learning are even as the ants. 
Who heap a mighty commonwealth of dust. 
Bridging great rivers, tunnelling great hills 
And cutting down enormous blades of grass. 
They are purposeless and leave no mark behind. 

[200] 



The Queen of China 



1st Traveller 
The Queen is coming, sir, and still she wears 
The silks of yesterday. 

2nd Traveller (secretly). 

True-founded fears! 
Now for the storm. 

(The Queen and the Chamberlain come in.) 

Queen 

My lord, what must I do? 
Long waking has so worn my heavy eyes, 
That in this ghostly and uncertain light 
I scarce can see. 

King 

you must touch him, lady. 
Learning this most fantastic cure devises 
And learning is our master. This old man 
Conceives my son to bear a mental wound, 
Which nothing but a magic touch may heal 
And that touch in the wounding hand resides. 
Since by light chance you may have wounded him — 
So learning's logic goes — do me this service: 
Go in and touch him. 

Queen 

Is it nothing more 
But only this? My hands are yours alone. 
Should you desire them severed at the wrists. 
Lead me on, chamberlain, where I must go. 

(The Chamberlain leads her behind the curtain.) 
[201] 



The Queen of China 



Old Scholar 

The Prince himself shall tell me he is cured; 
Send him to me for I have much to do. 
{He goes out.) 

1st Traveller 
Now bends she above him, as a branch of blossoms 
At sweet compulsion bends, in a lovely curve. 
{There is a dead silence.) 

Prince {behind the curtain). 
Pull down those flowers that brush upon my face 
And make a garland of them for my head; 
The gods are kindly to the garlanded 
And love not them that walk with undecked brow. 

1st Traveller 
He wakes! He speaks! What — 

King 

Draw the curtain back! 
{The 2nd Traveller throws hack the curtain. The 
Prince is seen, half sitting up, drawing the Queen uncer- 
tainly towards him, as though still in a dream.) 

Prince 

Have I been sleeping? All night long I dreamed 
. That flowers drooped on me and your face among them. 
I feel so light, so light, my heart assuaged 
That ached and smarted. My limbs feel so free! 
Give me your hands again. 

[202] 



The Queen of China 



King 

My son! My son! 

1st Traveller 
Take her away from him! Ah, this is madness! 
My lord, the trance hath worked upon his brain 
And his slow-moving and infected blood 
Bears along poisonous fancies in its flow. 
My lord, it is the sickness still that sways. 

2nd Traveller {muttering). 
You know it is not. 

King 

Ah, my son! my son! 

Queen [softly, near weeping). 
Unclasp his hands and give him cordial: 
The quickening liquor shall bring back his wits. 
Unclasp his fingers, chamberlain. You see 
How tightly they have closed upon my gown 
So that I cannot get away from him. 
I have done my part now; let the doctors come. 
Who shall restore him. 

Prince {fully awake) . 

What am I dreaming now? 
What am I clasping? Is it you indeed? 
And is all ended that deep-scored my heart, 
A hundred harrow-points in every day, 
That caught and tore the tender fibres up, 

[203] 



The Queen of China 



Each time I saw you? Do not leave me now, 
I am hardly cured, hardly aware of health. 
That yet is entering the open sluices 
And filling up my body. 

Queen {struggling). 

Let me go! 
The King is here. 

King {to 1st Traveller). 

Give me your hand, good friend, 
And help me from the place. I'll leave them here. 
There is another room not far from this. 
Where sometimes in the morning I have sat 
And counted breaking buds upon the limes. 
I can just go so far. I'll lean on you. 

Prince 
love, my throat and utterance are choked up. 
My heart rejects its business. Speak for me 
And tell me of the love between us two. 
So long time nourished secretly. 

Queen {weeping) . 
My love! 
{She goes into his arms.) 

King 
It is done. They see no more of us, no more. 
Our place is not within the bridal-chamber. 
Whence ancient men and foolish are shut out. 
Take me hence, friends. 

[204] 



The Queen of China 



1st Traveller 

Sir, you must speak to them 
And cheer them ere you go, lest they imagine 
Vain shapes of royal wrath and shameful death, 
That kings' wives know of and their paramours. 

King 
this is hard to do. My son! My son! 

Prince 
Father, are you too here? 0, I am joyful 
That you have read my secret and confirmed 
By this last seal the happiness you give me. 
Is she not fair? I am struck by wonder at her 
And cannot speak. 

King 

My son, I give you her; 
Love her as I do and it is enough. 
My queen, a last time you shall be my queen 
And sit beside me at the audience, 
Which, many years after that I am dead, 
Again you'll grace as queen, though then not mine. 
Much is to do today. The audience 
Is packed with business of a weighty sort. 
Your marriage first and then the declaration 
Of war against the Tartars, which shall be 
The last act of my reign. Old Chamberlain, 
Send for the general, who counselled me 
A war of mighty scope and purposes. 
Together we will plan it and together 

[205] 



The Queen of China 



We'll head the armies. But the marriage first! 
Good luck's with us, this is the time of flowers 
And flowers shall deck the bridal. Lead, my queen; 
Your prince shall follow. 

{He takes the Queen by the hand and conducts her to the 
door. She goes out, while he remains in the doorway.) 

King 

For the old, old men, 

There's nothing and the young are heirs of all. 

it is bitter for an ancient man, 

Who sees the years dissolve like smoke before him 

And nothing through them but the unfriendly grave, 

To know his last delight deserts his side. 

His last fool's hope of youthfulness in eld. 

Each disappointment that we know in youth 

Is wrapped up by the tale of years to spend 

And hurts us not, but now the years peel off 

And naked sorrow stands before mine eyes 

Without a hope to hide her ugliness. 

Come with me, friends. 

{He leads out the Travellers and the Chamberlain. The 
Prince sits up in bed, rubbing his eyes. His Servant en- 
ters.) 

Servant 

The bath is ready, sir. 

The waters, wherein pleasant scents do swim. 

Await your body. 

Prince {leaping out of bed). 

I am coming to it. 
Set out my robes, that there be no delay : 

[206] 



The Queen of China 



I feel already what short time's a day. 

{They go out in different directions and the stage is left 
empty. A Girl's Voice is heard singing outside.) 

Song 

The spring will soon be over, 
The withered flowers are falling, 

The crops are growing higher 
And harsh the cuckoo's calling, 

But when the spring is over, 

I still shall have my lover. 

For the spring is but a season 

And love is a delight 
That knows not age nor waning 

And hath an endless might. 
And when the spring is over 
I still shall have my lover. 

{The Curtain falls.) 



THE END 



[207] 



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